New York Democrats\u2019 latest bid to suppress Republican voters launches this week as the Legislature gets the ball rolling on amending the state Constitution to allow it.<\/p>\n
They claim they\u2019re just countering GOP gerrymandering across the country, but that prompts the question<\/a>: Why did they start trying to do this before the ink was even dry on the 2020 Census?<\/p>\n As we noted recently<\/a>, New York Dems in fact triggered the gerrymander wars with their relentless efforts, starting in 2021, to undo the voter-passed prohibition on gerrymandering so they could draw district maps guaranteed to shut out the Republicans (who still draw over 40% of the statewide vote).<\/p>\n That year they offered (and lost<\/a>) three ballot propositions to allow it; practically every year since, they\u2019ve pulled one<\/a> or another dirty trick<\/a> to do it anyway \u2014 with some success, though they had to thoroughly politicize<\/a> the state\u2019s top court to get away with it.<\/p>\n The latest stunt centers on passing proposed amendments this year and next, and so allow a statewide vote later in 2027, to empower ruthless redistricting for the 2028 federal election.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Their changes to the Constitution would:<\/p>\n Delete the prohibition on partisan gerrymandering.<\/p>\n Create a new power for the Legislature redistrict at will, rather than only after the Census.<\/p>\n Kill the requirement for two-thirds of both the Assembly and state Senate to approve an override of the independent redistricting commission.<\/p>\n Democrats figure the national news and anti-Trump fever will move the public to OK this naked power grab, and perhaps it will.<\/p>\n Then again, if the voters reject these changes, the Legislature will\u00a0gerrymander anyway: Again, that\u2019s exactly how our lawbreaking lawmakers responded to the public\u2019s 2021 rejection of their schemes.<\/p>\n They\u2019ll claim (as they always do) that it\u2019s about \u201cfairness\u201d and \u201cprotecting democracy,\u201d but in fact it\u2019s all about abusing their power to lock in more power \u2014 democracy be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Democrats\u2019 latest bid to suppress Republican voters launches this week as the Legislature gets the ball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[304,12885,9,11,10,49,17566,51,50,18571,299],"class_list":["post-252744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-editorial","tag-gerrymandering","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-assembly","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-new-york-state-senate","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}