This is a combination of original posts at http://lipamphleteer.wordpress.com/
Non-partisan redistricting is a great idea and it should be enacted. Under the current system, the legislature, or more specifically legislative leaders, draw their own district lines as well as congressional districts. They are able to pick who each member will represent and tailor districts to be safe for the majority party and force the minority party members to face tough races. The Brennan Center explains:
It’s an open secret: more and more legislative districts reflect calculations by those in power about how they can best preserve that power, while fewer and fewer give meaningful representation to communities of voters. Incumbents carve the citizens of their state into districts for maximum personal and partisan advantage, and democracy suffers: neighborhoods are split, competing candidates are drawn out of contention, groups of voters are ‘cracked’ or ‘packed’ to manipulate their voting power. We like to think that voters choose their politicians-but in the redistricting process, politicians choose their voters.
In addition, the current system makes it a lot easier for party leaders in the legislature to enforce discipline. If a junior member of the caucus wants to keep his or her seat, s/he better toe the party line and suck up to legislative leaders. Otherwise s/he may find themselves with a very different, and probably more difficult to hold, legislative district after the decennial census. Members of Congress also have to suck up to legislative leaders during the redistricting process. In the case of congresspeople, they just donate money to the state party leaders. For a rundown of the tricks used during partisan redistricting, see this article.
Even though the current system sucks, it doesn’t look like it is going to change any time soon.
Democrats had their chance to implement independent redistricting when they controlled the trifecta (Assembly, Senate and Governorship) in 2009-10. Instead, they were licking their chops to redistrict Republicans into oblivion.
The Republicans are no better. In the decades that they controlled the Senate before 2009 they failed to pass a non-partisan redistricting bill. In the 2010 elections, each Republican Senate candidate signed Ed Koch’s pledgeto support non-partisan redistricting. Now many of them are trying to get out of their pledge. Some claim that a Democratic bill, passed in August 2010, to change the way prisoners are counted for redistricting purposes poisoned the process (this link explains why the counting of prisoners is important). However, these concerns were not voiced on the campaign trail where Republicans proudly displayed their support for non-partisan redistricting and used it to help them get elected.
Other Republicans claim that redistricting will hurt them in the state. Here is what Ed Lurie, the former SRCC executive director under Joe Bruno, has to say: “My problem with nonpartisan reapportionment is that it’s still political because it means that it’s going to make it more difficult for Republicans to keep their majority.” This statement merely underscores that Republicans owe their current majority to decades of gerrymandering. If the politics were taken out of the process, they would either have to adjust their message or face life in the minority. The statement also gets to the main reason why I think non-partisan redistricting will fail, Republicans will not support it because they fear they will be signing their own death certificate. Their signing of the pledge was merely a tactic to position themselves as supposed reformers. They hope that people will stop paying attention to redistricting and move on with their lives.
One deadline has already passed for non-partisan redistricting. A bill introduced in both the Assembly and Senate sought to amend the New York Constitution to create an independent commission that would issue a binding redistricting plan. In order to be effective for the 2011 round of redistricting, the bill had to be passed by the Assembly and Senate and then passed again in the first quarter of 2011. The bill never made it out of either the Assembly or the Senate.
Now Governor Cuomo has introduced legislation (warning the bill is in all caps and its a pain in the ass to read) to create an 11-member commission to draw legislative and congressional districts. Here is how the Cuomo plan works.
The Commission
An 8-member committee will be appointed by the Governor and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and Assembly. The governor would get four appointments, two must be Democrats and two must be Republicans. That committee would then nominate a pool of forty people, 15 Democrats, 15 Republicans, and 10 non-Democrats or Republicans. This pool would will form the eventual 11-member commission that will “assist the legislature” in drawing districts. The pool must strive to be geographically and ethnically diverse. Each majority and minority leader of the Senate and Assembly gets 2 picks from the pool.
The committee picks the remaining 3 slots by a required vote of 6 out of 8. If two candidates get 6 votes and no other candidate gets 6, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals picks the last member. If one candidate gets 6 and no others do, the next top two vote getters get onto the commission. If no person gets 6 votes, the two top vote getters get onto the commission and the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals picks the last member. The commission that actually draws the lines would be a 4-4-3 partisan split. The 3 would have to get bipartisan support to make it to the committee or would be picked by a non-partisan Judge.
Anyone involved in New York government or politics (or their spouses) in the past four years would be barred from receiving an appointment to either the 8 member committee or the 11 member commission.
Line Drawing and Approval
The 11-member commission drawing the lines would be prohibited from considering how line drawing would affect a particular party or candidate. The commission would keep each district’s population within a 1% deviation (the current system allows a 5% deviation). The commission must strive to draw contiguous districts that are compact and that avoid breaking up cities, counties, townships, or neighborhoods. Once the 11-member commission comes up with a plan, the legislature must vote on that plan without any amendment. If the plan fails to pass either or both chambers of the legislature or if the governor vetoes the legislation and the legislature is unable to override the veto, the Senate and Assembly majority and minority leaders, or their designees, must testify regarding the reasons why the bill failed and state their objections to the bill if any. If the first plan failed, the commission must introduce a second redistricting plan that the legislature must vote on without any amendment. If the second plan fails, legislative leaders have to testify again. The commission would then introduce a third plan. This time, the legislature is allowed to amend the third plan. These amendments cannot affect more than two percent of the population of any district. They must also comply with the same guidelines that the 11-member commission followed, including a prohibition of considering how line drawing would affect a particular party or candidate.
So far, Dean Skelos has shown lukewarm support for the Cuomo plan. He introduced the plan in the Rules Committee of the Senate. This move prevents Senators from co-sponsoring the legislation and building momentum for passage. In fact, 26 Democratic Senators attempted to co-sponsor the legislation but they were rebuffed. If the bill were to garner enough co-sponsors, there would be no reason to delay consideration since it should sail through the Senate without much strenuous debate or amendment. Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group commented that “the only reason that this maneuver makes sense is as an effort to sabotage action on the legislation.” Senator Skelos has also made false claims that the redistricting process would be weighted in favor of Democrats, sought to focus attention on a constitutional amendment that would not be operative until the 2021 round of redistricting, claimed for the first time that the Cuomo bill may be unconstitutional, and pointed fingers at the Democrats. This earned him a rebuke from Ed Koch.
In addition, Republicans claim that they want to focus on the budget before they consider redistricting reform. This is merely a stall tactic to buy time for them to think up another excuse to oppose redistricting reform. Or perhaps they just hope that people will forget about redistricting. New York chronically has late budgets. Last year New York narrowly avoided the record for its latest budget ever. The record was August 11th which was set in 2004. The Legislature is capable of multi-tasking. They should consider Cuomo’s plan now.