The whole point of New York voters back in 2014 supporting the creation of a bipartisan commission to draw congressional and legislative district boundaries was to remove the element of partisan politics that had plagued this highly political task for decades.
The whole point was to take the power away from the elected officials who most benefit from the process and give it to a panel equally divided along political lines that would be forced to work together and reach a compromise so that neither political party could gain an unfair advantage.
The whole point was to incorporate fairness into a process that was inherently unfair. It was to build trust into a process that no one could trust. It was to give credibility to a process that fueled suspicion and cynicism and contempt for our entire electoral system.
On Monday, the Democrat-controlled state Legislature threw all that progress out the window.
Instead of accepting the will of the bipartisan commission, which in a remarkable demonstration of bipartisanship voted 9-1 on Feb. 15 to support a new congressional district map, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate — fearful of losing seats in Congress — tossed out the map and redrew some of the districts themselves. Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, is expected to approve the map.
Essentially, the politicians did exactly the opposite of what voters mandated them to do: They took over the process and politicized it to their advantage.
On top of that, Democrats took steps to ensure their redrawn map would be the new map — seeking to limit legal challenges to courts in Albany, Manhattan, Westchester or Erie counties — liberal-leaning jurisdictions where Democrats are likely to find a favorable ruling.
During the last challenge in which the courts threw out the Legislature’s maps, Democrats accused Republicans of “judge shopping” for a favorable result. In the height of hypocrisy, Democrats are now hoping to do what they accused Republicans of doing — rigging the appeals process in their own party’s favor.
For the few modest benefits they’ll gain from their redrawn map, state lawmakers lent credence to the arguments of those who claim the system is fixed. They overruled the will of their own voters by failing to accept the decision of the bipartisan commission. And worst of all, they obliterated whatever trust, credibility and fairness the nonpartisan panel was designed to introduce into the process.
Every New Yorker is touched by this process.
And thanks to state lawmakers, every New Yorker has now been harmed by it.