Redistricting: reform delayed is reform denied

The issue of redistricting — the redrawing of state Senate, Assembly and congressional district lines to reflect population shifts reported by the U.S. Census so that each district has a more or less equal number of people — sounds as interesting to most citizens as last month’s presidential poll numbers. There’s a vague sense that the topic is important to politicians, but most of their constituents don’t know much, if anything, about the redistricting process or its real-life consequences.

They should, because the way redistricting is being done in Albany subverts the public interest, according to the Citizens Union’s “Reshaping New York” research and policy analysis issued last month. And we agree.

Did you know that from 2002 to 2010, an average of 96 percent of incumbents were re-elected (and that in 2006 it was 100 percent)? And why is it that only 386 of the 4,625 New York state general elections from 1968 to 2010 were competitive, with a winner’s margin of victory of less than 10 percent? The challenger came within 5 percent of the winning incumbent in only 198 of those elections.

In the current State Legislature, three-quarters of the representatives are white, though the state’s population is less than 60 percent white; 9 percent are Hispanic, though the population is almost 18 percent Hispanic; and there’s but one Asian representative, even though Asians make up more than 7 percent of the population.

According to the Citizens Union report, “In January 2011, women made up 22.6 percent of legislators in New York State, with 37 in the Assembly and 11 in the Senate … 31st in the nation in terms of the representation of women in its legislature.”