Citizens Redistricting Committee

It’s really hard to believe.

I’ve been sitting and watching the surreal redistricting process in New York State for months, with every factor laid out front except the results. The players all understand the factors which produce fair districts.

Perhaps it would be more precise to say the players all know the factors that produce unfair districts: you don’t divide a community unnecessarily – a political, ethnic or racial community; you don’t divide a geographic community unnecessarily – you keep districts compact and contiguous; you do not dilute the vote of a particular population by providing one constituency with minimum population districts and another with maximum.

Read More: http://www.queenstribune.com/not4pub/Not4Pub_020912.html

Room 213 of Queens Borough Hall was not nearly big enough to contain the welcome the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR) received when they came to Queens Tuesday afternoon. The room was reduced to standing room only 15 minutes before the Queens town hall meeting discussing LATFOR’s proposed redistricting lines was scheduled to begin.

The welcome was not very warm, however. More than 100 people piled into the room with something to say — “our neighborhoods are being divided,” “the system is corrupt,” “we demand better,” “we have no faith in you.”

Read More: http://www.queenstribune.com/deadline/Deadline_020912_LATFOR.html

The political issue of the year in New York State is redistricting following the 2010 census. New lines for legislative and Congressional districts must be drawn in time for the 2012 elections. New York is on the path to being one of the slowest states to adopt new lines.

Money may be the mother’s milk of politics, but district lines are the arteries through which blood flows to nourish the body. They define the playing field, and the tilt. The result is likely to be a double-tilted field, advancing the interests of the leadership of both parties at the expense of independents, dissidents, freethinkers and outsiders.

Read More: http://www.queenstribune.com/not4pub/Not4Pub_020212.html

It’s pretty black and white. The New York State Legislature has been the most dysfunctional in the nation for well over the past decade.

Every ten years, they get the chance to start anew. The law requires a redrawing of legislative districts based on the change in population as compiled by the United States Census, taken every ten years.

Read More: http://www.queenstribune.com/not4pub/Not4Pub_092911.html