In a rousing win for New York’s voters, the state’s highest court invalidated the twisted district maps drawn by the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority to help their party for the next decade. Answering the calls of this page and the League of Women Voters, the Court of Appeals (where all seven judges were appointed by Democratic governors) affirmed that the obvious and egregious gerrymandering was both an illegitimate procedural end run around the Constitution and an illegal rejection of its clear command that lines never be drawn to discourage competition.
The 4-3 victory was total. Maps will be redrawn by a special master appointed by Acting Steuben County State Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister, with the high court recommending McAllister move primaries back two months.
The principled majority decision authored by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore correctly focuses on the language and intent of the 2014 constitutional amendment championed by the late Ed Koch and passed by the people. The new Independent Redistricting Commission was to take the lead, but when the IRC deadlocked, the Legislature illegally claimed power it did not have.
Wrote DiFiore: “there can be no question that the drafters of the 2014 constitutional amendments and the voters of this state intended compliance with the IRC process to be a constitutionally required precondition to the Legislature’s enactment of redistricting legislation.”
Down go the congressional districts. Down go state Senate districts. Left standing are Assembly districts; the majority wrote “we may not invalidate the Assembly map despite its procedural infirmity,” since no one challenged them in court. But if the entire process has been deemed illegal, how can the state be forced to swallow some fruit of the poisonous tree?
Instead of having congressional and state Senate primaries in August and then the Assembly and statewide offices and everything else on the ballot down to dogcatcher in June, the Legislature must consolidate all primaries in August. Though asking voters to go to the polls once in the summer is a recipe for poor turnout, it’s far better than asking them to go to the polls twice in the summer.
Since the proposed congressional lines no longer are constitutionally valid, the petitions of the statewide candidates, who had to collect signatures based on congressional districts, must also be reopened to allow candidates to collect additional signatures. Therefore, new candidates (like a possible future running mate for Gov. Kathy Hochul, hint, hint) would be able to get into the race.
Again, it’s a mess, but it’s better than an insult to small-d democracy. The blame here falls squarely on the big-d Democrats who let the politicians choose their voters and not the other way around.
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