A New York commission designed to independently draw new statewide congressional and legislative districts based on the 2020 census data succumbed to politics early this month when members divided along party lines and presented two opposing plans to the state Legislature.
The commission was created through a constitutional amendment approved by New York’s voters in 2014. Its aim was to put an end to the state’s notorious past practices of political gerrymandering. But the new rules allow both majority and minority party legislative leaders to pick an equal number of appointees, and the commission ended up with equally numbered Democratic and Republican factions. Each blamed the other for the inability to agree. It will now be up to the Legislature to decide which map, if any, to support.
For analysis, we spoke with Richard Rifkin of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School.
