To the Editor,
In life and in business, mistakes can be costly. We don’t always own up to them because it potentially means having to go back and redo significant amounts of work or even change our preconceived notions about something. Oftentimes the best way to remedy a mistake isn’t to deflect but to take responsibility.
In New York State, it is becoming clear that the construction of the Independent Redistricting Commission, created by referendum in 2014, was a mistake. The results of this mistake have been catastrophic for democratic legitimacy in our State: Democratic-appointed commissioners blocked good-faith efforts to create a compromise set of maps, allowing the Democratic supermajority in the State Legislature to pass heinously gerrymandered maps. The Courts struck those maps down and implemented the maps used in 2022, which were struck down again in December of 2023. The Commission is back to work as of February 2024 and New York will have its fifth set of Congressional maps in three years if you include the two different Commission-drawn maps rejected by the State Legislature in 2022. Throughout this entire process, significant amounts of money (both taxpayer and otherwise) have been wasted in legal fees, mapping consultant costs, and other expenses.
It is clear mistakes were made. The drafters of the independent redistricting law, though acting in good faith, did not consider the lengths to which State Democrats were willing to go in order to subvert the process in their favor. There were several flaws in the original law, most prominently that there were an even number of members and that the Legislature retained a role at all; most other states (both red and blue) with redistricting commissions have given their commissions the power to implement maps without legislative involvement. Montana, for example, provides for four legislative appointments and a fifth chosen by those four to serve as chair, or if the appointments can’t decide, then the chair is chosen by state supreme court. Arizona has a similar system but limits the appointees to a pool chosen by the state commission on appellate court appointments. In both of these states and elsewhere, limitations on partisan brinkmanship exist that are not in place in New York State. It is notable that both of these states had no redistricting lawsuits this cycle.
We have to do better as a State. Our redistricting system is simply not designed to create impartial fair maps in the face of one-party rule at the State level. It is clear that substantive changes must be made to take politicians out of the process and ensure that both parties – as well as New Yorkers of no party – have a system that protects their interests rather than the interest of one political party.
Ryan Conway
Albany County Legislator District 25