Redistricting deadline leaves electoral lines in limbo

The state legislature will decide on the future of New York’s Senate, Assembly and congressional districts. AP file photo by Hans Pennink

By Rachel Vick

With the deadline for the second presentation of draft redistricting maps fast approaching, the Democratic members of the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission announced Monday that the commission had likely failed their mission to deliver bipartisan maps to the state legislature.

In a statement released by New York Independent Redistricting Commission Chair David Imamura and Democratic Commissioners Eugene Benger, Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, John Flateau and Elaine Frazier ahead of the Jan. 25 deadline, they suggest that the final outcome was not a triumphant return from the drawing board.

“We have repeatedly attempted to schedule a meeting by that date, and our Republican colleagues have refused. This is the latest in a repeated pattern of Republicans obstructing the Commission doing its job,” they said. “We have negotiated with our Republican colleagues in good faith for two years to achieve a single consensus plan. At every step, they have refused to agree to a Compromise.”

“The Republicans are intentionally running out the clock to prevent the Commission from voting on second maps by its deadline,” they added, reiterating points made during the final vote at the beginning of the month that showed a commission more partisan than intended.

According to the statement, the Democratic delegation changed more than 87 percent of the lines from the September maps to the first set submitted to the state legislature earlier this month “based upon extensive consideration of… public comment.”

Tensions were high during the earlier vote, with members of each party suggesting that their counterparts had been uncooperative. The state legislature rejected the two maps that were submitted.

If the legislature rejects the version presented, they will then assume the responsibility of drawing the lines on their own, leaving the members with only the “hope that the Legislature will consider the input that the Commission has solicited and collected in its work.

With the official public comment long closed, Queens redistricting advocates have continued their push for more inclusive and culturally competent lines until the end.

Some members of the Richmond Hill community, divided into seven assembly districts, are fighting for a unified district in the new maps. The Latino-South Asian United Alliance expressed their own concern for the power returning to the hands of legislators whose future in politics could hinge on the final lines — a return to gerrymandering practices the new process was created, in part, to avoid.

“When this is done, our districts become cut up again to accommodate these selfish and self-serving politicians, at the expense of residents here, and our decades’ worth of advocacy, research and sacrifices, are unconscionably obliterated,” they said.