{"id":125071,"date":"2025-08-07T01:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T01:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125071\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T01:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T01:32:08","slug":"democrats-face-obstacles-in-changing-ny-redistricting-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125071\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats face obstacles in changing NY redistricting laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Normally the process of drawing new legislative maps takes place once a decade, to account for population shifts as reflected in the latest Census data. But Gov. Kathy Hochul says the normal rules no longer apply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in charge, and we\u2019re sick and tired of being pushed around,\u201d she said at a news conference Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Hochul and state Democratic leaders want to re-draw the state\u2019s congressional lines to create more Democratic-leaning districts \u2014 a direct response to a similar effort by Republicans in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>But that would almost certainly require changing the state constitution, a time-consuming process that requires legislative approvals and then a statewide ballot question.<\/p>\n<p><b>What You Need To Know<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gov. Hochul and Democratic leaders want to re-draw New York\u2019s congressional map, a direct response to a similar effort by Texas Republicans<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>New congressional lines would require a state constitutional amendment and couldn\u2019t take effect until 2028\u00a0<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Under proposed legislation, New York lawmakers could only re-draw maps if another state initiated the process first<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThe soonest any of this can happen would be voter approval in November of \u201927, which would allow us to intervene in the \u201928 congressional election cycle,\u201d Queens state Sen. Michael Gianaris said.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, legislative maps are drawn by the state&#8217;s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission. But legislation introduced by Gianaris would allow lawmakers to step in if another state circumvents the process first.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re playing a game that has 49 other players right now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if one or many of them decide to not play by the rules, so to speak, and do these off-cycle redistrictings, we don\u2019t think we should sit by and let the House of Representatives be corrupted with that kind of imbalance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Good government groups have cried foul, noting the process would allow for virtually no public input.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe legislature could just draw the maps in the middle of the night and vote on them the next day under this amendment, so it could be a pretty secretive process,\u201d said Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor at the good government group Reinvent Albany.<\/p>\n<p>Democrats would face some constraints: the state constitution currently prohibits drawing maps for partisan advantage. In 2022, the state Court of Appeals threw out a Democratic-drawn map for doing just that. Any similar attempt would draw more legal challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Hochul and other state Democratic leaders say Republicans have forced their hand, but critics aren\u2019t buying it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want to burn the village to save it?\u201d Fauss said. \u201cIs New York going to save American democracy by doing the exact bad things that other states are doing? I think voters are not who\u2019s being thought of first here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally the process of drawing new legislative maps takes place once a decade, to account for population shifts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":125072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,13565,7448,76969,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-125071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-local-state-politics","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-bobby-cuza","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa","27":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114984907253804348","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}