2020 New York Redistricting

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Some discussion of NY redistricting started in other threads (Census data thread and AOC thread in the Congressional forum), so it seems like a good time to start a thread dedicated to NY 2020 redistricting.

NY is projected to lose 2 seats in re-apportionment, though maybe if estimates turn out to be too low or growth somehow picks up over the next year, it might only lose 1 seat. This being the case, it seems fairly clear that if 1 seat is lost, the lost seat will almost certainly have to be Upstate. If a 2nd seat is lost, there is more uncertainty as to exactly what seat that would be and what area it would come from. Overall, upstate and long Island have been losing population, while NYC and its immediate suburbs have had some population growth (albeit below the national average).


With 2016 population estimates, if NY loses 2 districts it turns out to be pretty straightforward to eliminate 1 GOP seat on Long Island (Peter King's, in this case). I would expect that something approximating this is likely to happen if Democrats control redistricting in NY. The basic formula is to turn NY-01 into a a bit more of a Republican vote sink (although unfortunately it still includes some fairly strong Democratic areas), and to put the most Dem areas which are the furthest to the east on Long Island into 2 Democratic districts, and then to have a remaining portion of Nassau County that gets combined with the NYC districts. As one possible example, the map here has 3 seats in Long Island:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/bad58d5c-d5ca-44b8-9100-e49b3a33af5f (2016 pop estimates map)

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a54c23b3-50c6-407a-82a4-3795bfdb7236 (PVI map)

NY-01: Lee Zeldin (R+8)
NY-02: Tom Suozzi (D+4)
NY-03: Kathleen Rice (D+4)

For reference, Zeldin's current district is R+5, Suozzi's is D+1, and Rice's is D+4. So the effect of this map is to eliminate entirely Peter King's current R+3 seat, while also making considerably Suozzi safer and leaving Rice's district no more Republican than it was in the first place.

In addition to those 3 seats, there is sufficient population for about 60% of a district left over in Nassau County. This remainder is not even really Republican (it is R+0.6), so it is trivial to divide this remainder up between 2 or 3 NYC districts, and no matter how that is drawn/split up, all of those 2 or 3 NYC districts will be safe Dem. Likely districts for this job include Gregory Meeks' district (which already contains a decent portion of Nassau County currently) and Grace Meng's district, but maybe they could throw in a 3rd district to help out. This 60% of a district will also probably shrink down to more like 50% of a district left over with 2020 census data rather than 2016 estimates. So It is also likely to be a bit easier to do all of this with the 2020 census data than with the 2016 estimates, since more of the population distribution will likely have shifted towards NYC by that point.

If desired, it would also be possible to make NY-02 and NY-03 more democratic still by making the lines a bit messier but picking up some of the more Dem precincts remaining in the left over Nassau section (or possibly drawing 1 of the districts just a little bit into NYC itself).

In addition, if Dems control redistricting they are likely to sure up Max Rose's district. The Staten Island district can be easily made safely Democratic by simply drawing the heavily democratic and high turnout Park Slope area into it.

There is also some speculation that some in the NY establishment might wish to target AOC for elimination. It is still in principle possible that they could try to do this without eliminating a Dem NYC seat, but it should be clear from this map that it is not necessary to eliminate a Dem seat in NYC, it is very straightforward to eliminate a Republican-leaning seat on LI instead.

So overall, my expectation at the moment would be for -1 GOP seats on Long Island, and -1 upstate seats (which could potentially come at the cost of either Dems or the GOP).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Grace Meng's district is not going to take in large chunks of Nassau County because that would substantially dilute the Asian population of her district, which is already relatively low, and also sets her up for a potentially competitive race as northeast Queens is just not that Democratic, and she would have to drop the more Democratic western portions of her district. You also can't put that much of Nassau into Meeks' district without diluting the black population too much (and putting only the black areas on the border into his district risks the remainder being quite Republican).

That sounds plausible at first glance, but I don't think it is actually right after briefly checking it. I quickly and not particularly carefully split up the extra part of Nassau County here between Meng's district and Meeks' district here:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/1493837b-ce5d-4aea-8f84-3b0d88e9ac41

1) The Asian population in NW Nassau County is actually fairly high (including bona fide majority-Asian precincts), so Meng can take on a decent chunk of NE Nassau without any substantive issue. Without any effort and without crossing flushing meadows at all (leaving a whole bunch of majority Asian precincts out) I easily drew a 39% Asian plurality Asian district that also goes into Nassau. This is less Asian than yours which is 43% Asian, but can easily be brought up to 43% or so Asian if that is desired with some precinct swapping (most easily by crossing Flushing Meadows to include some of the same precincts you included).

2) The (decidedly non-optimized) district I drew for Meng is 61.4%-37.9% Obama 2008 (as compared to her current district, which was 63 - 36%). Although I didn't bother to check PVI, the district has not gotten any whiter since then... it is in 0 practical danger of voting GOP, but if it were it would be trivially easy to make it more Dem even while including the northern parts of Nassau County. Either the Hasidic Jewish precincts near Flushing or white competitive/R precincts to the north could easily be drawn out (interestingly enough, if AOC has a district, one or both could easily be put in her district).

3) Insofar as there is any practical danger to Meng, it is from a primary challenge. She is probably in less danger with a map similar to mine than with one similar to your AOC elimination one, if for no other reason that there is no risk of being matched up with AOC (but also, nobody is going to run a successful primary challenge against her based out of Nassau County).

4) Regarding Meeks' district, the district that I drew without any particular care which includes that whole chunk of southern Nassau county is a grand total of... 1% less black population than the one you drew. As with Meng's district, if you were trying to raise the African American population share a few points, I would bet that you could. This is still easily plurality African American and has 0 risk of ever voting Republican in a general election. Meeks should also be safer in a primary, because there are fewer non-Black dems in the district, and hence less base for a primary challenge. In addition, having his district go into Nassau makes it possible for the other Black districts to potentially also shift further away from Manhattan and the white progressives in Brooklyn. You mentioned in the other thread the primary challenge to Yvette Clark which in 2018 was supported by white liberals in Park Slope... Well, this would make it easier for both her and Hakeem Jeffries districts to both shift further east and to get rid of more of the gentrifying precincts which are the main threats to them (i.e. from a progressive/anti-establishment primary challenger). So Meeks, and also the other Black NYC representatives, ought to be happy with something like this.

The likeliest solution to this problem is a district that connects northern Nassau with southeastern Westchester via threads along the Queens and Bronx coasts (basically a cross-Sound district). You can see an example of that on my AOC-elimination map.

That also works (although Tom Suozzi might not like that much, as it potentially could make him vulnerable to a Westchester-based primary challenge, and is substantially different from his current district). The basic point I was trying to make though is you can eliminate a GOP district on LI easily, there are multiple different ways to do it.

I also don't think the Democrats would create a Republican vote sink on Long Island because there is enough chance that the Democrats could sweep all seats on Long Island in a good year (I didn't check the 2016 PVIs, but all four of my LI seats have a Democratic PVI in 2008 - obviously there have been some R trends in parts of LI since then, but not enough to put any seat out of reach for the Dems), and they don't want to give up that possibility.

Don't get me wrong, that would be fine with me. All the seats on LI can actually be made Dem leaning, if you are willing to gerrymander hard enough (I was assuming they probably wouldn't, but if they would, fine with me).

Edit: Also, you have drawn Kathleen Rice out of her district. She lives in the very Republican enclave of Garden City (although she also routinely overperforms there).

I wasn't paying attention to that sort of detail, just trying to see on a very basic level what is possible, but this sort of thing could easily be fixed by the actual mapmakers.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Additionally, will it be possible to draw two black-majority districts in Brooklyn anymore?

I don't think it is possible any more. It was only BARELY possible in 2010, and since then the general trends of district populations increasing, Hispanic/Asian population growth, suburbanization/spreading out of the African American population, and gentrification into black majority areas have all continued.

What I would expect to happen is that it will be similar to what gradually happened in other places like Los Angeles where it was no longer possible to draw black majority districts. The districts will remain with a black plurality (should be easily in the 40%-50% range) and that will be sufficient at least for the time-being for black voters to have an ability to elect the candidate of their choice. The most obvious way for that to happen is for the districts to abandon white liberal & gentrifying areas in the north-west of the current districts and instead to take on more territory (which is less liberal, more competitive, and in some cases Republican on the presidential level (Orthodox Jewish precincts).

From the perspective of the incumbents, this is a "win-win" - it means that the Staten Island district (and potentially also Nadler's district) don't need to suck up competitive/Republican territory in southern Brooklyn, and instead can include more liberal areas in NW Brooklyn which will make the Staten Island district in particular safe Dem in the General Election. Meanwhile the black incumbents in the the black plurality districts are also safer, because they no longer have to worry about progressive primary challenges based from the high-turnout white liberal precincts in north-west Brooklyn (and obviously they remain 110% safe in a General Election).


-- edit --

also from Max Rose's wikipedia page:

"Rose grew up primarily in Park Slope. He is Jewish, and celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah at Union Temple of Brooklyn in Prospect Heights."

So yeah, that is doubly more reason to expect Park Slope to be drawn into his district, and perhaps at least a good chunk of Prospect Heights also.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Prospect Heights (my neighborhood!) won't be drawn into Rose's district, as the black population is too substantial here even with demographic shifts over the past decade to be put anywhere but one of the black districts (presumably kept in Clarke's district). They could try pushing Rose's district west into Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill, though, if the population works. Those neighborhoods are very heavily white and were only added to Velazquez's district in 2010 (i.e., she doesn't care about keeping them, and most of the minority politicians of late view having too many white liberals in their districts as somewhat dangerous to them in a primary in any case).

I agree that making the black districts actually majority black appears to no longer be possible (even on a -1 map and especially on a -2 map), but I don't think either Clarke or (especially) Jeffries feels particularly strongly about whether their district is 51% black or 45% black. Clarke is most interested in excising out voters who vote against her in primaries (so, white liberals in Park Slope) but doesn't care so much about having white Republicans in her seat. Jeffries probably would like to have more white liberals in his district but it's not something important to him (and he gets more just by virtue of demographic shifts anyway).

The 2020 primary will be important here, though. If Clarke loses her primary (and I would say it's 50/50 at this point, only not more because the internal factional strife has died down a bit since the IDC went belly up), all calculations on what will be done with her district are off.

Re: Prospect Heights, I wouldn't say the whole thing gets drawn in, but it is only 25% black in the 2016 DRA data, and should be lower in the 2020 data. A bunch of precincts particularly in the western part are lower than that also, so even if it doesn't all get drawn in, it definitely seems conceivable that some precincts could be. Yes, Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill make sense of course.

However, since you mention Jeffries, he apparently lives in Prospect Heights, so he might well get some or all of it.

If Yvette Clarke loses her primary in 2020 due to votes from white voters in the western part of current NY-09 (but still wins in majority black areas in the rest of the district), there will still be a VRA case (indeed, more of a VRA case than currently) to remove those white liberal parts from NY-09, since they will have stopped the district from 'performing' and it won't have elected the candidate of choice of African American voters.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Here is a properly aggressive 25 district NY Democratic gerrymander. It has 23 Dem seats and only 2 Republican seats. If Republicans are really going to be doing things like gerrymandering TN-05 into oblivion, then Dems should do things like this in states like New York. Although what they really should do is a 25-0 map (spaghetti strings from Manhattan to western New York). Maybe if they went 25-0 with ridiculous spaghetti string districts, then the partisan GOP Supreme Court might finally do something to stop partisan gerrymandering.

Anyway, here is my 23-2 map:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/cd0c6d55-3f16-48e5-abd3-714345b3d5c9


NY-01: D+4.24, 55.6% D composite, 58.4% Obama 2008
NY-02: D+9.95, 61.5% D composite, 62.6% Obama 2008
NY-03: D+4.92, 56.4% D composite, 58.1% Obama 2008
NY-04: D+8.68, 60.2% D composite, 57.8% Obama 2008
NY-05: D+12.26, 63.8% D composite, 60.7% Obama 2008 (44% Asian plurality)
NY-06: D+13.08, 64.5% D composite, 66.0% Obama 2008 (42% Black plurality)
NY-07: D+32.86, 84.3% D composite, 79.9% Obama 2008 (36% Hispanic plurality)
NY-08: D+24.35, 75.8% D composite, 73.7% Obama 2008 (44% Black plurality)
NY-09: D+28.61, 80.1% D composite, 77.9% Obama 2008 (44% Black plurality)
NY-10: D+33.85, 85.6% D composite, 84.3% Obama 2008
NY-11: D+12.42, 63.8% D composite, 63.3% Obama 2008
NY-12: D+26.23, 77.9% D composite, 73.4% Obama 2008
NY-13: D+41.46, 93.0% D composite, 90.9% Obama 2008 (54% Hispanic majority)
NY-14: D+11.59, 63.1% D composite, 63.3% Obama 2008 (36% Hispanic, 46% White)
NY-15: D+39.99, 91.5% D composite, 62.6% Obama 2008 (63% Hispanic)
NY-16: D+10.52, 62.1% D composite, 60.5% Obama 2008
NY-17: D+7.53, 59.1% D composite, 59.1% Obama 2008
NY-18: D+5.27, 56.8% D composite, 57.8% Obama 2008
NY-19: D+4.4, 55.9% D composite, 57.3% Obama 2008
NY-20: D+4.8, 56.3% D composite, 56.5% Obama 2008
NY-21: R+13.15, 38.3% D composite, 43.2% Obama 2008
NY-22: D+4.03, 55.6% D composite, 56.2% Obama 2008
NY-23: R+13.64, 37.9% D composite, 43.2% Obama 2008
NY-24: D+5.31, 56.9% D composite, 58.7% Obama 2008
NY-25: D+6.59, 58.1% D composite, 57.9% Obama 2008


Upstate:



If you want to do 23-2, it seems like you have to do something a bit weird upstate to make it work, because the clusters of Dems in the middle of upstate don't quite work out to a whole number of sufficiently Dem districts. The key thing done to solve that issue in this map is that Syracuse is combined with the more Dem parts of the North Country. Onodonga County is cut with the north part of it (including the whole city of Syracuse and the large share of the population) going in NY-24 (D+5.31), and the southern suburbs go into NY-22 and contribute to making it pretty strongly Dem-leaning (D+4.03). It is possible Katko might try to run in NY-22, but if so Brindisi should be favored due to the partisanship of the district, and it should include more of Brindisi's territory. Or possibly Katko might even try to run in NY-21 (presumably along with Stefanik and who knows who else), and who knows who comes out on top in that Republican primary.

There might be some better alternatives to how I did NY-24. Maybe NY-22 could be drawn up to the Vermont-Canada borers directly instead (but that seems hard because of how red the rural areas are that you have to go through). The other alternative that might be better would be to bring back the Buffalo-Rochester earmuffs. Buffalo alone is not enough to support 2 Dem districts, but it could be enough for 1 district and part of another one, if the other part of the second district came from Rochester. Then the remainder of Rochester/Monroe County could be combined with the Dem areas in NY-22/24. That might make it possible for NY-21/22 to have more normal-looking shapes. In that case you would need to draw either NY-20 or NY-19 up to the Canadian/Vermont border though to not waste Dem votes and avoid having to concede a 3rd upstate GOP district. So if you are willing to split Buffalo/Rochester and bring the main Buffalo district down to maybe D+5-6 or so, that might make things more compact elsewhere.

Speaking of Buffalo, NY-02 is moved from Long Island to Buffalo solely in order to keep the numbers of the other districts linked to their current incumbents. So "NY-02" is basically the current NY-26.



NYC/LI:



There are 0 Republican seats downstate. Long Island is exquisitely carved up to make everything be at least D+4. NY-01 is D+4.24, NY-03 is D+4.92, and there is nothing else between that and NY-04, which is D+8.68. So worst case, maybe the Republicans somehow manage to win both NY-01 and NY-03, in which case they get... exactly the same number of seats they have now (minus the Staten Island district). Also, NY-01 is 57% White and NY-03 is 59% white, so Republicans are probably not going to win either of those without doing at least relatively well with BOTH non-white voters and college educated whites. It would be useful to see how Trump did in 2016/2020 though.

NY-04 in particular is messier than it really needs to be while being safe Dem, but the reason for that was just trying to make NY-05 have as high of an Asian population as possible, which led to some awkward precinct choices. If not for that, NY-05/04/14 could be made at least somewhat neater.

AOC gets in on the Long Island cracking action with NY-14. She shouldn't complain. It is definitely better than having her district be eliminated, and in a way it could be a good thing for her. If she ever wants to go anywhere other than the House, it would be good practice for her to figure out how to make her messaging appeal to voters in areas other than urban heavily Dem base areas. Even so, she is in no real danger of losing a D+11.59 majority minority district which also includes the heavily Dem white progressive areas of Astoria. Similarly, Jamaal Bowman gets NY-16 to go a little bit more upstate in order to help out Sean Maloney, but he should also be in no real danger of losing and it is a lot better for him than having his district be eliminated.


All the Dem incumbents which are in remotely competitive districts get improvements in their PVIs, with the one exception of Tonko (NY-20), but that is still D+4.8, which ought to still be safe given that it is based in Albany/Schenectady. Yes, it is possible that the Republicans might on occasion in a strong Republican year win one or 2 of these districts that are about D+4/D+5, but if so in that case Dems will already have lost the House elsewhere in other tipping point districts in other states, and Dems should be able to win them back right away as soon as a Dem year or neutral year comes along. But overall the districts here are generally as safe or safer than those on most maps with 3 or 4 GOP seats. The main thing that could go wrong are further GOP trends in rural upstate areas, but upstate seems to have snapped back to Biden fairly well, and in addition the Dem upstate districts are mostly not that reliant on truly rural votes (but are more reliant on votes in towns and cities which are less likely to trend hard GOP).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I tried re-doing upstate with un-packing Buffalo. It seems like doing that causes some quite beneficial changes for Democrats in terms of partisanship, via a series of chain reactions. It enables more efficient packing of Republican votes overall, and also a better distribution of Democratic votes between the upstate districts, so they are basically all safer and all have a minimum PVI of at least D+5.5 to D+6 or so.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/64b7c0e7-b1a0-4e58-99ee-49feee3bcaf1

I didn't change the downstate districts change, and the upstate or partially upstate district PVIs are now:

NY-02 (moved to be the Buffalo district): D+5.54
NY-16: D+10.39
NY-17: D+7.51
NY-18: D+7.76
NY-19: D+6.1
NY-20: D+6.69
NY-21: R+13.1
NY-22: D+5.82
NY-23: R+16.05
NY-24: D+5.86
NY-25: D+5.47

The thing that sets this all in motion is un-packing the Buffalo district, and adding back a Buffalo-Rochester earmuffs district (NY-25). Using some of the extra Buffalo Dem votes on NY-25 means there are some left over Rochester Dem votes that NY-24 can take (and indirectly pass on to NY-22). It also means that NY-24 doesn't need to go up into the North Country to the Vermont border in order for both NY-22 and NY-24 to be made strongly Dem.

As a result, both NY-22 and NY-24 are stronger Dem, up to nearly D+6 each. That ought to be pretty much unwinnable even for Katko, and in addition Katko's Syracuse base is split up between two districts, both of which have a lot of other Dem territory which is new to him (mainly either in Rochester or in Ithaca/Binghampton). So I would be quite a bit more confident that this map would actually knock out Katko and end up with the advertised 23 D - 2 R result. I think this map would most likely end up producing a Katko-Stefanik primary in NY-21, because Stefanik would not have a realistic shot of winning NY-20, and Katko would not have a realistic shot in NY-24 or NY-22.

Since NY-24 doesn't need to take the Dem (or at least competitive) North Country areas which are near Vermont, NY-20 takes them instead. This also means that NY-18 can pull back from a lot of the heavily R rural areas that it took on in the previous version, which means it can take Republican or competititive territory from NY-19 (and indirectly from NY-20). That allows BOTH NY-19 and NY-20 to become more Democratic, even while NY-18 also becomes more Democratic.

So this is definitely a significant improvement for Dems in terms of the partisanship of the districts. It would be necessary to check against 2016/2018/2020 results, but I would think this should be a pretty sturdy gerrymander. None of the districts are really that dependent on an unreasonable number of rural Dem votes, so as long as Dems maintain reasonable support levels in the cities/suburbs in upstate, these districts ought to hold even if rural areas trend further Republican. The bulk of the heavily R rural areas are packed into NY-21 and NY-23. I would think the only way these districts would fall is in an extreme Republican wave year where the GOP already picked up probably at least 250 seats in other states.

In terms of the aesthetics, it is less clear if it is an improvement. The main aesthetic improvement is NY-21 is definitely more compact (though still not really compact) since it no longer wraps the entire way around NY-22. On the other hand, NY-02 and NY-25 are less compact since they are no longer simple pure compact Buffalo/Rochester districts.

NY-24 and NY-22 in particular have a bit less good PVIs than is possible in order to make them at least minimally compact. Most of these districts can be made more Democratic by making them a bit less impact, or alternatively can be made a bit more compact without much loss of PVI (some of the tentacles only improve the partisanship very slightly, so if you carefully tweak it you can end up with pretty much the same effects and maybe make it look a bit better).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The Buffalo district is D+8.87, and the Rochester district is D+6.75. The district in between is R+11.69. I have a hard time seeing how you could create another D-leaning district out of that without putting one or both of the other seats at real risk.

You can't while having relatively "clean" lines like you have, but if you use squiggly lines instead, there is a way ("where there's a squiggle there's a way"):

a) The Albany district can also be unpacked at least a bit.
b) There are some Dem votes in some of the R districts that are being wasted and could be extracted (with sufficiently squiggly lines, of course!). For example, in Oswego, Plattsburgh, Elmira, Geneva areas etc.
c) There is a lot of variation in how heavily D (and in some cases R) parts of the "border areas" between NYC suburbs and "upstate" around Westchester/Orange counties up as far north as Poughkeepsie or so. If you use squiggly lines to make sure that the more Dem areas in this border area are drawn in with upstate districts to the north, while the more GOP areas in that border area are drawn in with NYC districts to the south, you can free up a good amount of extra Dem votes for the upstate districts. As one example, this may mean that your Ithaca-Binghamptom-Kingston district doesn't need all of those (especially with the Albany district also unpacked a bit).


Hopefully DRA can get 2020 election data added for New York sometime soon... It is kinda depressing looking and seeing that there is 2020 census data, and then wanting to draw a map with that, but then there is only 2012-2016 (and even worse, 2012-2016 average) political data. How many votes Romney got is of distinctly decaying relevance for drawing districts for the next decade.....

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I mean, you could also draw a 26-0 map in NY if you’re willing to squiggle enough. But the state politicians also have other priorities.

Not wrong. But the weight of those other priorities has become less and less over time, as politics has become more nationalized.

We will probably get an 8-0 map in Maryland, for example, and Kansas Republicans are planning to absurdly slice up the Kansas City area. These are not things that would have been done in the 1990s or the 2000s.

In another 10 years time, if the United States still exists by then and has elections (an open question), and if Democrats don't wake up and pass some elections reform legislation while they still actually have the chance, then we are on course to end up in a world where there are 26-0 maps in 2030, and similarly absurd maps in other states.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Haha, no. Absolutely no one would allow it. Not the courts, Republicans, Democrats, the VRA, etc. And this isn't because "Oh the Dems are cowards", its because drawing a seat from NYC to Plattsburgh is ridiculous.

It certainly is ridiculous, but that is not a legal argument.

There is no legal case against it that could not also be used to stop other ridiculous gerrymanders as well, such as all the districts splaying out from Austin TX to God only knows where, or the KS-01 that Republicans are apparently planning to draw that will go extend from the center of Kansas City all the way to the Colorado border.

As a side note, if Stefanik were to hypothetically get drawn out by a ridiculous district like that, IMO the best way to do it would be to draw Trump tower into her district (along with a reasonably sized chunk of neighboring territory from the middle of Manhattan). If Stefanik likes Trump so much, let her represent Trump Tower.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Loving this gerrymander.  It looks like it's 24-2?  Plus it screws Stefanik.  Beautiful.

That is still with the 2012/2016 PVI, right? It could probably be done more cleanly with 2020 Presidential results due to greater polarization. Or alternatively, 25-1 could probably be achievable with one mega-R-rural pack district and un-packing the Westchester/Bronx Dem districts a bit. Personally though, I still favor a 26-0 map baconmandering upstate from Manhattan. If the partisan R Supreme Court doesn't like that, let them strike it down, in which case we will have judicial precedent against partisan gerrymandering which could also be used to strike down R gerrymanders in states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee where otherwise Republicans will just do whatever they want for partisan advantage. Dems need to use all the leverage they have in the handful of states where they have it like NY, IL, and MD.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Please forgive them God, for they know not what they do.

That doesn't do anything to rule out a 26-0 Dem gerrymander (much less a less extreme and more reasonable map like a 24-2 or 25-1).

"Subject to the requirements of the federal constitution and statutes and in compliance with state constitutional requirements, the following principles shall be used" - first of all, that makes all of these principles subject to the requirement of statutes. So one could simply pass a statute that says these principles don't apply (or perhaps, make them only apply if Republican controlled states agree to also apply similar principles), and then they would all be null and void. Note that only requires a majority vote, not even a supermajority to do. Moreover, one could always have a state Constitutional Convention and abolish these rules via majority vote in the convention.

"the following principles shall be used" - This doesn't say how they "shall be used." They could be used in any way that one wants. One could, for example, read them and then throw them in the trash. That would be one way of using the following principles.

"When drawing district lines, the commission shall consider whether such lines would result in the denial or abridgement of racial or language minority voting rights" - You could simply say (what is true!) that if Republicans gain a trifecta they will pass legislation that denies and abridges racial and language minority voting rights. Therefore one could reasonably say that a 26-0 Dem gerrymander is actually REQUIRED by these principles.

"Each district shall consist of contiguous territory" - doesn't matter, you can simply make districts be contiguous on thing 1 inch wide tendrils which contain no people. Moreover, if push comes to shove, you could always say that they are contiguous via wormholes. Wormholes are thought by physicists to be a real physical phenomenon, and if the mere future possibility of wormhole contiguity is not enough, I am sure one could find a 'physicist' who would be willing to testify that at the quantum level, a district combining rural upstate and Manhattan would be contiguous via spooky action at a distance. Or, even if the district is not contiguous in 3 dimensional space, it is contiguous in 11 dimensional string theory space.

"Each district shall be as compact in form as is practicable" - I mean, a baconmander from the Canadian border to Trump Tower is as compact "as is practicable." Sure, you could have a more compact district than that, but it wouldn't be practicable.

"Districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition" - Again, that mandates a 26-0 Dem gerrymander. Because if Republicans gerrymander R states and Dems don't draw gerrymanders in D states, then control of Congress won't be competitive and there will be no political competition. In that case, R's would always control Congress under a dictatorship of the minority, even if Dems win the majority of the nationwide Congressional/Senatorial vote (as has mostly been the case over the past decade or two).

"favoring or disfavoring incumbents" - We weren't trying to disfavor Elise Stefanik by drawing Trump Tower into her district, we were just combining communities of interest. Rural folk in the North Country love them some Trump. So they have a community of interest with Trump Tower. Ergo North Country + Manhattan baconmander district.

"The commission shall consider the maintenance of cores of existing districts, of pre-existing political subdivisions..." - Again, doesn't say how they should be considered. Perhaps the way they should be considered is by thinking about them and then saying, "nah, that doesn't make sense, and even if it did, gotta have that Trump tower north country community of interest respected."



The bottom line is, when one is operating in bad faith, anything is possible.

Ideally, sure, we could and should have a better system. But the system we actually do have and which we are unfortunately stuck with for now is Hobbesian war of all against all. What happens in the war of all against all if one group decides to be pacifists? They get eaten.

We know that Republicans will operate in bad faith to attempt to rig elections in other states, both via gerrymandering and also - increasingly - apparently by actual literal rigging, if the way Trump wanted to deal with 2020 is anything to go by. Very simply, if Democrats don't do likewise in states such as New York, then Republicans will win control of Congress (along with the Senate and perhaps the Presidency) and impose tyrannical minority rule once again. And who knows, with how off the rails the GOP has gone under Trump, it could even end up being permanent, not just more temporary minority rule for a few years.

An alternative possibility might be for Congress to pass voting rights legislation like HR1 or something to try to set up some sort of better national electoral system, but given that Congress refuses (or rather, a few Senators refuse) to do that we are stuck with the war of all against all. So turn to the person to your left or to your right and proceed with gouging their eyes out.

Or, at least personally, if Republicans were willing to step back and look at all of this on a meta level and realize that none of this crazy gerrymandering redistricting stuff makes any sense for having a functional system of government, then maybe we could re-design the electoral system to remove the incentive to gerrymander.

But Republicans have no interest in that. Consequently Democrats don't have a choice to be interested in it either, at least for now. It takes two to tango.



It is easier for older people like Torie (not to pick on Torie, he is a good guy whose heart is in the right place, and if the GOP consisted of people more like him then it would be possible to have a functional country) to ignore this or pretend that it is not reality, because they won't live forever and the future won't affect their lives. But the rest of us will have to live in a future ravaged by climate change etc.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Thank you for your legal brief. My only comment is that as you know one cannot pass a mere statute that violates the NYS Constitution

Ordinarily one cannot. However, this amendment says "subject to the requirements of the federal constitution and statutes." The question is what "statutes" refers to. One reading is that it refers to Federal statutes. Another reading is that it refers to State statutes. You seem to be assuming/prefer that it refers to Federal statutes (which is certainly plausible, since it clearly refers to the Federal Constitution right before). But it could also be referring to state states (or both state and Federal statutes), in which case it would be similar to amendments of the U.S. Constitution that grant Congress power to enforce the amendment "by appropriate legislation." So which interpretation is better? You got dueling interpretations, dueling lawyers, I'm just asking questions, etc. In this case, this State constitutional Amendment could be similarly granting the New York state legislature to enforce the amendment "by appropriate legislation," i.e. by a state statute. And that state statute could say "you may/can/must draw a 26-0 Dem gerrymander" or whatnot.

Of course, I am not arguing this in good faith, but it is highly unusual in contemporary times for lawyers to argue things in good faith. Because, you know, the war of all against all.

, and the language that constrains the Dems from going utterly wild is in the NYS Constitution, and second to amend the Constitution requires approval by the voters in a referendum.

I mean, according to King George III New York could not set up a constitutional convention and become independent of Great Britain. But if you set up a constitutional convention, you can have a new Constitution. Or just change an amendment to the previous constitution (if that were even necessary, which it isn't, there are plenty of more parsimonious ways to get around these restrictions, such as by saying that they only apply if a commission actually draws the maps). Legitimate democratic (small d) power ultimately doesn't derive from any written document, it derives from the consent of the governed. Previous generations don't have a legitimate right to lock in failing governmental systems which are incapable of dealing with contemporary problems by imposing fake supermajority requirements if the current/future generation does not consent to that.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Sometimes lawyers get suck cases. It's not your fault. However, the words "federal constitution and statutes ," clearly when it comes to what statutes it refers to, means federal statutes. e.g. the VRA. The idea of having a state constitution provision that provides for a state statute to trump it, would be at once fascinating, novel and yes - nonsensical.

I would agree (if I were a judge and were being an objective judge like a judge ought ideally to be, and not a hackish partisan judge like many/most judges increasingly seem to be) that your proposed interpretation is the better one. But that is only when also taking into account presumable legislative intent and overall context, and not just the text.

However, I don't think it is actually as clear as you think. The correct/best way to state that as a matter of grammar/text would be to say "federal constitution and federal statutes," and if that were the intent of whoever wrote the amendment, they ought to have phrased it that way. When one leaves out the second adjective (second use of "federal"), the reader can only infer whether the writer/speaker intends for the adjective next to the first noun is also meant to modify the second noun. I don't know where you/others learned your grammar, but when I learned to write in English class, I remember clearly learning that was a bad way to write (although it is not uncommon).

IIRC there is some sort of technical term for that which you could find in a grammar book, but I forget what it was.

Not a grammar book, but here's something I found quickly about this general issue:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/246762/same-adjective-for-two-nouns

So in terms of what the text literally says, there is no "federal" adjective directly modifying the noun "statute." A strictly "textualist" judge could pretty easily rule that way as far as I can see. That would IMO be a bad faith ruling and too rigidly textualist for non-hackish purposes, but bad faith rulings like that happen all the time.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

If anyone has any questions I will try to answer them. If not, that’s OK too.

How did you get the 2020 results, those are not on DRA I thought? Or are they?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

What an utterly garbage map, in all respects.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Besides anything else, it is remarkable that they somehow managed to only draw a single seat with a clear Hispanic majority (the one in the Bronx). The northern Manhattan-Bronx one is technically majority Hispanic also, but only a bare majority with 50.5%.

That is despite NY increasing from 17.6% Hispanic up to 19.3% Hispanic.

(talking about the supposedly "dem" map)

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I never saw why it would need to go into Manhattan. Maloney's proposal was probably meant to get Rose into congress. There would be a very left wing Brooklyn portion and then also a portion in Manhattan but Staten Island Democrats could still have the primary. Issue is there still are a few progressive leftovers and no one else wants those until you reach AOC who is too far away. The simplest solution is to give the Crane Husbands of NYC their seat by attaching them to Staten Island.

AOC is not too far away. Have you never looked at how NYC districts snake all over the place for no logical reason? AOCs district could easily be made to snake down from Astoria or wherever to pick up significant progressive parts of Brooklyn. That would not make for a logical or compact district of course, but NYC districts have never really been compact or logical.

You are, however, right that it would probably be more logical to simply put the progressive areas with Staten Island, and it is surprising that they are apparently not going to do so. Your supposition that it may be intended to help Rose makes sense.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I never saw why it would need to go into Manhattan. Maloney's proposal was probably meant to get Rose into congress. There would be a very left wing Brooklyn portion and then also a portion in Manhattan but Staten Island Democrats could still have the primary. Issue is there still are a few progressive leftovers and no one else wants those until you reach AOC who is too far away. The simplest solution is to give the Crane Husbands of NYC their seat by attaching them to Staten Island.

AOC is not too far away. Have you never looked at how NYC districts snake all over the place for no logical reason? AOCs district could easily be made to snake down from Astoria or wherever to pick up significant progressive parts of Brooklyn. That would not make for a logical or compact district of course, but NYC districts have never really been compact or logical.

You are, however, right that it would probably be more logical to simply put the progressive areas with Staten Island, and it is surprising that they are apparently not going to do so. Your supposition that it may be intended to help Rose makes sense.

AOC lives in the Bronx. Her district is not going to stretch all the way down to Park Slope.

AOC's base is in Astoria, not so much the Bronx, and that is more material than where she happens to live.

You are right that her district probably would not stretch all the way down to Park Slope (although it could), because there are simpler and easier ways to pack more Progressives into AOC's district, so as to protect other traditional politicians from progressive primary challenges. For example, give her territory that is closer to Astoria like in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, areas that no establishment politician really wants to represent and which are currently in other districts like Carolyn Maloney's and Nydia Velazquez's. Then you have those other districts which are closer to Park Slope such as Maloney's and Velazquez's crack the progressive vote down there.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So yeah rather than streching that district like that, why not just give the progs to Staten Island where they can get their own district when as long as they don't nominate a complete loon they should win everytime. And that was the solution that is being proposed by the legislature atleast according to rumors.

I agree that is more logical, it is just not what that memo which was posted a page or two back in this thread is talking about, with having Staten Island combined with part of Manhattan, that's all.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So yeah rather than streching that district like that, why not just give the progs to Staten Island where they can get their own district when as long as they don't nominate a complete loon they should win everytime. And that was the solution that is being proposed by the legislature atleast according to rumors.

I agree that is more logical, it is just not what that memo which was posted a page or two back in this thread is talking about, with having Staten Island combined with part of Manhattan, that's all.

That was the SPM memo which didn't make much sense.

SPM is the DCCC chair, so unless Demos are totally incompetent, they should have already coordinated between DCCC, the NY congressional delegation, and NY State legislative Dems and have already drawn the map and are simply describing the map that they already drew in the memo. That's what Republicans would do (and did do in other states like Texas).

Then again, these are elected Dems we are talking about here, so it is probably more likely that they are hopelessly incompetent and the state legislature will accidentally draw a Republican gerrymander.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

TX itself is a good example of this. Although the national and statewide parties agreed on overall objectives, shoring up their delegation, the map drawn by the statewide leaders was not looked upon favorably by national interests. National interests in MO and IN wanted vastly different maps compared to what the Rs got. Dems nationally were pushing for an 8-0 map, rather loudly I might add, and instead god a watershed 7-0-1. This is redistricting.

The TX map was coordinated and drawn directly by Mike McCaul, representing national interests and the interests of the TX Congressional delegation, and state legislators. It is true that it was not coordinated with RRH, but McCaul represented national GOP interests on behalf of the TX Congressional delegation, not RRH. And of course, McCaul also managed to represent his own personal interests by giving himself a particularly safe and much more rural district. The reason why the TX map was not more aggressive was simply that it would not have been in the best interest of the national GOP to risk losing even more seats in Dem trending urban-suburban TX.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Is there anything that even shows national Republicans are doing anything at all to influence redistricting this time around?

It's true they are doing a worse job of it this time around than they have done in the past, but that is just the natural consequence of letting Trump run the GOP and having the national party fall into an uncoordinated chaotic mess, devoid of any serious leadership and intelligent well-informed strategic analysis of the sort they used to have.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

If the maps are even remotely like those that have been floated, it is going straight to the NYS Appellate Division of the Appellate Court. It will be interesting to find out how the Democrats will explain that their butt ugly facially obvious gerrymander does not "unduly" favor one party.
It will be even more interesting to read the court decision.

As Maloney (or whoever he got to write the memo) lucidly explained in the memo, the map was not drawn to favor one party - and in particular not to "unduly" favor one such party. Insofar as it favors any one party, such favoritism is "due."

The real rationale for drawing the districts he proposes is all about communities of interest. As with, for example, a district combining the lakefront communities, such as the district he proposes be drawn stretching from Buffalo to Rochester.

Question: Why would you want to split up lakefront communities?
Answer: You wouldn't, unless you didn't care about the community of interest that is lakefront communities and wished to oppress their community. And that would be a disgraceful neglect of fair, neutral, non-partisan redistricting principles. And that is not something we can stand for.

Now, maybe drawing a district based on communities of interest turns out to favor the Democratic Party. But honestly, who is to say - maybe it won't end up favoring the Democratic Party. After all, voting patterns change and will be different in 2022 than they were in 2020. And naturally we haven't even looked at partisan data from 2020 and know nothing whatsoever about such things.

So even if it does favor one particular political party, it is a mere coincidence that flows naturally from drawing a map that respects communities of interest in New York State such as what Maloney has proposed. Just one of those things.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

What's wrong with Staten Island into Manhattan? There's both historical precedent and a heavily used ferry.

Yep, there is a clear community of interest of ferry riders. Many thousands of Bronz's NYPD officers ride the ferry in from Staten Island to Manhattan every day, where they police Times Square and make sure no terrorist attacks occur. So if you disrespect that community of interest, then you are disrespecting the police and helping the terrorists win.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

This is ridiculous. Why can't they just show us a map of the damn map?