New York’s final congressional and Senate redistricting maps were released in Saturday’s early hours, bringing the controversial process to a close and throwing the Democrats’ bid for widespread congressional wins into uncertainty.
The process in New York and other states has been under a microscope as Democrats seek to maintain their razor-thin margin in the U.S. House in a year when Republicans are expected to win big across the country.
New York’s Court of Appeals struck down New York’s Legislature-drawn maps last month, saying they amounted to a partisan gerrymander in favor of Democrats, and that lawmakers didn’t follow a predetermined independent redistricting process that voters greenlit in 2014.
The ruling sent the maps back to the drawing board, where one person, court-appointed special master Jonathan Cervas, set about rejiggering the districts. Steuben County judge Patrick McAllister had the final say on the maps – draft copies have been out for public review since Monday.
The final maps were largely similar to the draft copies, with a few key changes, based on feedback from communities and other stakeholders in recent days.
Some Democratic lawmakers and community members slammed the maps earlier in the week as sidelining diverse communities by dividing longstanding neighborhoods aligned by race or ethnicity, and reducing their congressional representation.
NY’s highest court rules on maps:Court of Appeals strikes down NY’s redistricting maps. What happens now?
What was the initial feedback from Democrats, residents?
“The draft redistricting map viciously targets historic Black representation in NY,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-Brooklyn, said Monday on Twitter. “The draft map is unacceptable, unconscionable & unconstitutional.”
The court, in a statement released with the final maps, said it adhered “to the instructions for treatment of minority groups as laid down in the New York State constitution.”
The court received dozens of letters from around the state since Monday, many of them addressing the split of communities they see as having shared interests.
Long Island attorney Frederick Brewington disputed the exclusion of Westbury and New Cassel, both communities of color, from the 4th District in Cervas’ proposed maps, saying in a letter to the court this week that the move placed the areas “with communities that share no political, life experience and social realities that shape the daily lives of its residents.”
The court addressed that request in its statement, but said Westbury and New Cassel wouldn’t be included in the 4th District, in order to maintain the district within the city line, according to court paperwork.
In the Hudson Valley, the special master’s splitting of Kingston into two congressional districts in his proposed maps also raised concerns about weakening the voting power of diverse voters.
The proposed map put much of the city of 24,000 in the 18th District, which takes in parts of Ulster and Dutchess counties and all of Orange. The rest of the city went to the 19th District, a sprawling, rural area that reaches from the Massachusetts border to the Finger Lakes.
Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, a Kingston Democrat, argued in a letter to the judge the division violated a 2014 amendment to the state constitution that required redistricting to avoid disenfranchising minority populations.
“Splitting Kingston up and then separating part of it from other nearby diverse municipalities such as Ellenville, Poughkeepsie and Newburgh will, in effect, dilute the voices of communities of color throughout the Hudson Valley,” Cahill wrote.
In response, the court left Kingston intact in the final 18th District.
Which districts will see the most change?
The final maps amount to a major reshuffling of the Hudson Valley and Central New York from the Legislature’s originally approved maps.
The state was slated to lose one congressional seat this year, due…
Read More: New York congressional, Senate redistricting maps released by court