2020 New York Redistricting

[MaxQue]

Should NY-11 extend into Sunset Park, etc., more liberal areas?

If a Staten Island Republican wins, can they hold on?

Bay Ridge is one of the last Brooklyn GOP strongholds.

If NY lose 2 seats, that seat is probably doomed, not much Republican areas to add.

[MaxQue]

Will SI secede if a Afro Latina DSA wins? You think they will put up with that?

They'll have too, like Brooklyn currently does with the racist Italians.

[MaxQue]

Splitting a community in a way that both halves still get representation—the candidate of their choice wins and is elected—is not the same as splitting a community to make each half weak enough they can be outvoted by the other party in both districts (DeSantis).

I think some people genuinely forget that the VRA was written to help African-Americans get representation and not in order to provide Republicans a tool to minimize the number of representatives African-American voters can help elect. The latter was an unintended effect, not the sole and best use of the law.

And what about the candidate of the suburbs? I don't think what Cervas did was racist, I am just calling it out as the fact he did the exact same thing Ron DeSantis did. A clean gerrymander based along a natural river boundary to favor his political party.

FYI DeSantis did not split the black community in Duval County, what he did was split the white moderates on the East Bank from the Black community. Still a gerrymander but just important to note.

Also still waiting for the defense of the Albany split.

He diluted the Black voted by putting Black areas in with White areas that are not remotely communities of interests and split Duval County into two districts when one district can fit completely within the county.

Wow and Rochester is smaller than a district while Albany County is exactly a district. Sure there are sometimes arguments to split exact districts such as Cobb/DeKalb GA for example. but the manner in which it was done was simply to unpack it.

True, but Albany isn't floating in the air. Is putting Albany together worth drawing non-sensical rural seats with bad road connections?

[MaxQue]

State constitutions matter.

They do, but the state constitution doesn't say what Hochul claims it says. That question was settled by the Supreme Court in the early 90's.

[MaxQue]

In other news...

https://twitter.com/NYElectionNews/status/1667302230788038658
No more judge shopping for NY Republicans. If the NYCoA gives the legislature another shot (big if), the NYGOP will have to sue in one of four very liberal counties to get the map overturned.

Surely this violates equal protection, right?

No. This is actually common (these are called venue rules).

[MaxQue]

I took a stab at a Hochulmander 2.0. A bit ugly and probably inefficient; would love to see if there's a neater way to upstate especially.

link




You could definitely also do the configuration Oryxslayer does; it just depends I guess if Goldman prefers Sunset Park and Bensonhurst or Staten Island.

Upstate, this is even uglier than the original map that was thrown out.  Dems need to use the DeSantismander strategy and keep it neat looking. 

Except it's unlikely the old map would be thrown away from being a gerrymanderer now (it was 5-2, but one of the judges retired and one of them said in her concurrence it wasn't a gerrymanderer, she voted to strike down for procedural reasons and would have approved the map if the procedure was respected).

[MaxQue]

Is the commission pledging not to change the old court map?

Objectively, the existing map is pretty good. I can see why they’d want to keep it similar to what it is rather than letting the legislature draw a disgusting gerrymander.

The Republicans may want it but the Dems on the commission may try to punt it to the legislature like Ohio's Republicans did.

One can only hope; the existing map is a piece of crap!

Why do you think the current map is bad? If you have actual reasoning, I’m more than willing to hear it out.

Until there is a national ban on gerrymandering (which I strongly support) any New York congressional map that isn’t a strong Democratic gerrymander is awful.  Anyway, beyond that, I genuinely believe the 2022 NY redistricting case was wrongly decided (thankfully, that decision has been effectively reversed).  So I take issue with it being imposed at all even beyond partisan considerations.    I’d also argue that it is a soft-Republican gerrymander rather than a fair map which is pretty ridiculous to have for New York.

The New York State Counstition has proviosons banning gerrymandering; if it's outrageous for the republican to subvert those provions in Ohio and Utath why is it ok for democrats to do in New York ?

Utah I will grant you,  but the Ohio map turned out alright for Democrats and has now been locked in. They would have 3 seats in a full gerrymander perhaps 2 if OH Rs went full Illinois D or NC R.

Realistically the fight came down to whether restrictions on partisan gerrymandering placed an affirmative obligation for proportionality or partisan fairness. I think that's ambigious and it's worth noting the current NY map was not drawn to do so. The proportionality was almost accidental. It has 20 seats more D than the nation and in 2020 probably would have gone something like 19-7 and 21-5 in 2018.

For Ohio, it's locked in for 2 elections, so it stop being locked-in after this year elections.