Court sets new congressional district lines

[brooklynite]

Source: Albany Times Union

ALBANY — A federal court in Brooklyn has set the boundaries for New York's 27 congressional districts, making minimal technical changes to lines it drafted earlier this month.

On Monday, the panel of three federal judges noted that the Legislature had failed to draw its own congressional maps even though less than 24 hours remained until the beginning of the petitioning process for the June 26 House primary.

"Accordingly, the court declares New York to be without a congressional redistricting plan that conforms to the requirements of federal law," the panel wrote, "and it hereby orders defendants to implement the redistricting plan attached."

The federal court seized control over the process of congressional redistricting late last month, when a three-judge panel accepted arguments that state lawmakers tasked with drawing the lines had reached impasse. During a hearing last week, judges telegraphed their decision to adapt the existing maps with minimal changes.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Court-sets-new-congressional-district-lines-3419295.php

---

...and thanks to the further dysfunction of our Legislature, we will have seperate Primary dates for Federal and Legislative elections.

[libinnyandia]

1. As someone who lived in Brooklyn for more than 20 years I never could understand how New

York state (and local) politics could be so dysfuntional in so many ways: 20 years of Giuliani and Bloomberg, GOP controlled State Senate, Al D'Amato in the U.S. Senate .......

[hedgehog]

2. Do you have a source for the map?

I haven't been able to find one. It's be nice if someone has a map of the old districts, as well.

[RoccoR5955]

3. There's one on the NY Times' site

Here's the link. You can even do a comparison!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/20/nyregion/new-york-redistricting.html?ref=nyregion

[hedgehog]

5. Thanks for the map! I don't know about downstate,

but the districts for Upstate look much more equitable and reasonable!

[Igel]

6. Equitable is in the mind of the perceiver.

I lived in Rochester for a while. The districts around Rochester were insane. They had a couple of complementary motivations.

The suburbs didn't want to be affiliated with Rochester proper. Too high a crime rate, too not-the-same-Party, too black, too Democratic. Ponder the correlation however you want to.

Rochester itself was linked through a thin strip of filler to areas in the west with a larger black concentration. Pity the inconsequential people in that strip, put in a district simply because their land was needed to make centers of black population "contiguous." The result was a district that was far from majority minority. On the other hand, it also had a sufficiently large (D) population that it wasn't hard to elect black officials. That 30% black usually voted more or less as a bloc, the white vote was split D/R.

As far as the politicians there were concerned, in other words, the suburbs were too not-the-same-Party, too white, too Republican.

Now there's a fairly even and low percentage of black population.

My only beef is whether a judge should do something that legislatures should do and whether the remedy is worth it.

[brooklynite]

4. Official Court filing

https://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/pub/docs/cv/324457/1.11.cv.5632.6762393.1.pdf