'Egg on our face': New York redistricting mess spooks House Dems

[brooklynite]

Politico

In some corners of the party, it’s caused intense frustration — and fingerpointing — about how it could be avoided.

“I think it looks bad. I think we’ve got egg on our face,” said Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), who is retiring from her Long Island seat next year. She was among some Democrats who questioned whether the legislature had overreached when it created a map so heavily slanted toward Democrats when the state constitution placed a check on gerrymandering.

“It didn’t need to be that way,” she said. “We could have made lines that were fair and followed the rules and still have been effective at making sure that Democrats are represented.”

The redistricting mess dominated a discussion of the state’s Democratic delegation during a Zoom meeting on Thursday, according to multiple people on the call. Members expressed concern over the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the process and discussed potential legal avenues for fighting the ruling.

[elleng]

1. As it should, imo.

Sorry to see this, and kind of glad I've not lived in NYS during my voting years; nothing to crow about, my dear Empire State.

[FoxNewsSucks]

2. One can only wonder why

red states do not have such a constitutional requirement to keep gerrymandering in check.

Really. WTF. How many fucking ways can Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot???

[TreasonousBastard]

3. "Legal avenues" helped get us in this mess, and The Law just stopped us, for a while, anyway...

Went to a seminar with my county's BoE this week, and we might have to put our primary off for a few months because we fucked things up so badly.

[Hoyt]

4. I'm with Democrats who believe fighting gerrymandering with gerrymandering

is wrong.

Others apparently think gerrymandering is bad only when it favors GOPers. I’d agree that if you gotta error, error on side of Democrats. But, even Democrats admit this was not an error.

[ARPad95]

5. Syracuse.com article about the lower court (Republican) judge who initially declared the maps

unconstitutional and his previously chosen independent expert will be redrawing the maps.

https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2022/04/rural-judge-college-researcher-tasked-with-redrawing-ny-congressional-districts.html

The high court handed responsibility for creating a new set of maps to state Judge Patrick McAllister — the lower-court jurist who had initially declared the maps unconstitutional. Anticipating that higher courts would agree with him, McAllister had already chosen an independent expert to help him craft the maps, Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy.

The pair now face a tight deadline to come up with new maps, even as state officials try to figure out what to do about the state’s primary election, scheduled for June 28.