An editorial by the New York Daily News talks about the Senate Republican's draft for new Senate and Assembly districts and how they have used redistricting to increase their power while abandoning the interests of voters.
Nothing less than the future of representative democracy in New York is on the line as the Legislature establishes new district lines based on the latest census.
By long-standing practice, lawmakers have drawn maps to protect incumbents while shutting out challengers. Democrats load up Assembly districts with Democrats; Republicans stock Senate districts with Republicans.
Elected officials of both parties choose their voters rather than the other way around. The cancerous consequences are that competitive elections and public accountability are nil.
The sad fact is that incumbents are almost as likely to go to jail as lose an election.
During the 2010 election campaign, most legislators in both houses signed former Mayor Ed Koch’s pledge to support creating a nonpartisan commission to handle redistricting. They lied.
Read the full article here [14].
