In New York the redrawing of congressional districts, as well as those for state Senate and the Assembly, is supposed to occur only once every 10 years, following the decennial federal census and we have a bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission to do the job.
The 10-member panel’s first time out, in 2022, was a total botch, as the process was unconstitutionally hijacked by Democrats in the Legislature until it was stopped by the state’s highest court. The courts hired an unbiased expert from Carnegie Mellon to make the maps.
More court cases followed and the IRC had to come back and redo the Assembly maps in 2023 and the congressional constituencies in 2024 (under a court ruling that also made the current Senate lines unconstitutionally invalid, which we point out, but no one is willing to bring a court challenge).
So with no mapmaking until 2032, why is IRC having its annual meeting at noon tomorrow in Albany? Better to close it down and bring it back in seven years.
