Now that the lackluster 2014 legislative session is in the books, New York\u2019s elected officials turn their attention to November.\u00a0 The statewide offices of governor, comptroller, and attorney general are all up.\u00a0 All 213 legislative seats and 27 Congressional House of Representatives are up for a vote.<\/p>\n
In addition, New Yorkers will have three questions on the ballot.\u00a0 New Yorkers will vote to approve a bond act which will allow the state to borrow up to $2 billion to purchase classroom technology, access to the Internet, and to upgrade some school structures.\u00a0 A second question will allow lawmakers to have access to legislation electronically, instead of only in printed form.<\/p>\n
But the third question will likely be the most contentious:\u00a0 Changes in New York State\u2019s process for drawing legislative district lines.\u00a0 Every ten years, New York is constitutionally required to adjust its legislative districts to reflect changes in the state\u2019s population.<\/p>\n
For decades, New York has allowed its state legislators to draw the political boundaries for their own districts.\u00a0 In 2012, Governor Cuomo agreed to a deal that allowed lawmakers to once again draw their own district lines, but with one caveat \u2013 changes in the way these lines were drawn in the future.<\/p>\n
A new report, issued by the New York Public Interest Research Group and other reformers,documented how the 2012 deal undermined the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” by allowing legislative districts that vary substantially in population size.\u00a0 The bedrock principle of “one person, one vote” holds that all Americans should have equal influence in electing their representatives.\u00a0 The report argues that New York State allows “gerrymandered” districts with vast disparities in population size that, while technically legal, undermine democratic principles.<\/p>\n
The report, Can The Plan:<\/em> How The 2012 Redistricting Deal Denies New Yorkers Fair Representation And The Fundamentally Flawed Redistricting “Reform”<\/em> examined the populations of Assembly and Senate districts.\u00a0 The report\u2019s key findings include:<\/p>\n While the districts may be humorous to look at and vary greatly in their population size, the impact has been devastating on our democracy.\u00a0 The resulting unfairness in redistricting \u2013 coupled with an equally unfair campaign finance system \u2013 has created incumbency protection.\u00a0 Only 55 incumbents have lost in the general elections held over the past thirty<\/em> years.<\/p>\n Other states have population differences that would be a huge improvement if enacted in New York.\u00a0 The state of Illinois has no<\/em> population deviation at all.\u00a0 The states of California, Washington and Wisconsin have legislative district population differences of less than 1% of the average.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, under the so-called reform that the governor extracted as part of the redistricting agreement, the proposed constitutional amendment to change New York\u2019s process will do nothing to reform the problem of unequal representation.\u00a0 It ultimately leaves the legislature in charge and the other changes in the amendment are largely cosmetic.<\/p>\n The groups argued that New Yorkers should reject the constitutional amendment to change the redistricting process that is up for a vote this November. \u00a0Given that the next redistricting process begins in 2020, there is still time to get the reforms right.\u00a0 Fake reforms should be rejected.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all for now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be keeping an eye on the Capitol and will talk to you again next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that the lackluster 2014 legislative session is in the books, New York\u2019s elected officials turn their attention to November.\u00a0 The statewide offices of governor, comptroller, and attorney general are all up.\u00a0 All 213 legislative seats and 27 Congressional House of Representatives are up for a vote. In addition, New Yorkers will have three questions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[91,37,28],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gerrymandering","tag-redistricting","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n