(The Center Square) — New York got poor grades from a national voting access group for its once-every-decade legislative redistricting process.
The Empire State received a “D” grade in Common Cause’s Community Redistricting Report Card along with Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and West Virginia for redistricting following the 2020 U.S. Census population count.
The Washington, D.C.-based group ranked the state’s redistricting efforts based on factors ranging from transparency to providing opportunities for public input, expanding minority representation in the new districts, and ensuring that the process is nonpartisan and didn’t involve ‘gerrymandering.’
New York was faulted for making the redistricting process “largely inaccessible” to the public, disregarding the input of voting groups and advocates, and failing to use a “fair and equitable” process to draw up the new political maps.
The group quoted from its New York director, Susan Lerner, who called the state’s independent redistricting commission “an ultimate failure” and the process of drawing new districts “lousy from beginning to end.”
“New York needs broad reform of the state redistricting process,” the report’s authors wrote. “All participants in this report agree that the current version of New York’s redistricting commission is flawed and needs reform to function in 2031.”
Nationwide, the report’s authors said that at least seven states, including Alabama, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, got an “F” grade for redistricting.
Most of the states that received a failing grade were faulted for a partisan redistricting process that sometimes disenfranchised minority voters.
California and Massachusetts received the highest rankings in the group report, with both states getting an “A-” grade for their redistricting.
The U.S. Constitution requires states to redraw congressional districts every decade to account for population changes. States also use those numbers to draw maps for their legislative districts.
But the redistricting process in New York was mired in political squabbles and legal challenges between Democrats and Republicans over proposed political boundaries.
New York voters approved a ballot question in 2014, stripping the Legislature of its role in the once-in-a-decade redistricting and putting it in the hands of an independent commission.
Following the 2020 Census, the Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected the panel’s proposed congressional maps amid a stalemate and approved their districts.
A group of New York voters filed a lawsuit against the commission, asking the court to require the redrawing of the congressional boundaries. They argued that the Legislature failed to consider a second set of maps, as the 2014 redistricting law required. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, backed the effort, calling for a new redistricting plan.
In July, a New York appellate court ordered the state to redraw congressional lines ahead of the 2024 elections, in a victory for Democrats that Republicans are vowing to appeal.
New York Democrats, who would control a new redistricting plan, praised the appellate court’s ruling, pledging to work on new political maps for the state ahead of the 2024 elections.
But Republicans have appealed the ruling and blasted the lawsuit as a “power grab” by the state’s Democrats, citing the state constitution’s prohibition on mid-decade redistricting.
