Democrats keep thumbing their noses at voters in battle over New York’s gerrymander

New York Democrats are attempting to disenfranchise voters by ramming their partisan congressional district map.
Redistricting Companions

What unmitigated gall: New York’s highest courtroom slaps down Gov. Kathy Hochul and fellow Democrats for making an attempt to ram by means of unconstitutionally gerrymandered voting districts — and the way do they reply? By resorting to sneaky new methods to power these districts on voters anyway.

The maps disenfranchised voters of each events — Republicans, by squeezing them into a couple of districts in order that the GOP would lose half its Home seats; Democrats, by creating “protected” Dem seats that may be dominated by the social gathering bosses’ decisions.

But the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee went to federal courtroom to power New York to make use of the contaminated maps anyway. This, after all of the Democrats’ noise in Congress these final 15 months about defending voters’ rights.

In fact, this follows the state courts’ repeated slapdowns of New York Dems.

Final month, New York’s Court docket of Appeals (each single member of which was hand-chosen by a Democratic governor) discovered the Dems’ congressional district boundaries violated the state Structure’s ban on maps “drawn to discourage competitors or for the aim of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or different explicit candidates or political events.” That language comes from a 2014 constitutional modification handed by New York voters, who primarily reaffirmed it in a referendum final yr.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has confirmed to be no completely different from her predecessor with regards to defending Democrats.

William Farrington

The Dem maps would’ve possible sliced the variety of New York congressional seats held by Republicans from eight to only 4, whereas Dems received 22. As an alternative, the judges ordered a court-appointed particular grasp to attract honest district boundaries and that the June 28 major be moved to Aug. 23, to make sure sufficient time for campaigning.

New York Dems’ response? They requested the courtroom to undertake a “new” congressional map that appears very like the one the courtroom had simply tossed: Closely Democratic Park Slope would nonetheless be jammed into the Republican-leaning Staten Island district in a backdoor bid to flip it blue. Dems would even be higher suited to steal GOP districts upstate and on Lengthy Island.

The DCCC, in its bid to save lots of the gerrymander, tried to say that forcing new districts would additionally disenfranchise voters — so there! We received’t attempt to clarify the “logic” there, besides that it relied on the “impossibility” of drawing new maps in time, a declare rejected by each state and federal authority concerned. The state Board of Elections has stated explicitly the first could be moved to Aug. 23 and nonetheless meet all federal necessities.

Dems merely need energy, at the same time as they blather about voters’ rights. It’s all blatant proof of their top-to-bottom hypocrisy.