A political plan to change the way districts are drawn in the state has been put on hold for now by an appeals court in the state. After looking into how district lines were made, it was found that the process heavily favored one political party over another.
Five judges found, by a majority vote, that Republicans had no say in how the 2022 congressional districts would be drawn. It passed the Legislature without a single vote from a Republican.
In 2012, the map had 19 districts for Democrats and 8 districts for Republicans. As the number of people living in New York continues to fall, the current map will give the state one less seat. Even so, the Republican Party would have lost a total of five more seats with this alternative strategy. This means that there can be no more than three Republicans in a state with 27 congressional districts.
You can't find a state that's this color of blue. Worst of all is that Democrats might still be able to get away with it.
Politico reports that Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the state Senate Democrats, said, "We are happy the Court upheld the legislature's process" and that the house had the power to make these maps.
The Senate and Assembly maps that have been changed are now seen as valid. The Court of Appeals would have ruled on this case in the end. We can't wait to explain why we think the current congressional lines should stay the same.
This decision was not as important as the one a lower court made in late March. In Steuben County, a Republican State Judge said that the Legislature did not have the power to set the boundaries because the 2014 constitutional change that required redistricting did not happen.
But since Democrats chose to ignore a state law they had passed in the past to keep politics out of the redistricting process, the state Constitution says nothing about this. In the end, the Commission gave up and didn't make any suggestions about how to draw the lines between the districts.
After the Census showed that Democrats were going to lose seats in seven blue states, they decided to change how they did things. For the Republican Party to do well, it was important that New York beat the gerrymandering in Florida and Texas.
To get a political edge over the Republicans, the Democrats made up a story that they had been turned down by the "Bipartisan Redrawing Commission." Then they killed everyone in the Republican party.
On the other hand, a very large number of appellate judges agreed with the Republican Party. As part of their complaint, they said that the new state constitution forbids drawing district lines to help a certain political party.
Even though two of the five judges didn't agree with this choice, it was made anyway. They said it was okay to question the Republicans' right to use gerrymandering as a way to prove their point. This is what the Republicans said.
The case will be heard by the Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in this state. All of the people on the court now were put forward by Democrats and approved by the Senate.
The New York Republican Party is no longer united because members are fighting with each other. Since the party does not hold any state-level positions, there is not much hope for its future. The same things will happen after redistricting as they did before. New York will still be run by one party as long as Republicans keep fighting among themselves in a way that doesn't help anyone.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Real News Real Patriots.
