| Since folks are already moving on to redistricting conversations, today might be a good day to post this.
Way back in October, I posted about a forum on redistricting held by Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton and featuring Assemblyman William Parment and former Tompkins County Legislator Mike Lane.
I posted audio and some of my handouts then, but I had the audio transcribed, and then spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the transcription. I think it's accurate now, but of course, if you find something wrong, please let me know.
The transcript seemed to be too long for the extended text, so here it is.
The key piece for me is Parment's saying:
Telling tales out of school. Perhaps the press could ask us, “Well, did you consider voter enrollments?” And I say no. Or, they say, “You mustn't consider voter enrollments.” And no, we won't consider voter enrollments.
And we didn't. We considered voter performance. We don't care how people enroll. And if you ever looked in rural… New York State… you know… that everybody that's a rural Republican doesn't vote that way. And the same is true in the cities where you have heavy, heavy Democratic component, and not everyone votes that way. So the only thing we're interested in is voter performance, not voter enrollment.
Most of the rest of it is less surprising, but in case you were wondering about the criteria legislative leaders use to gerrymander districts, registration is apparently not their focus. Much of the rest of Parment's talk illustrates the other constraints that help determine how districts are drawn. I suspect Mike Lane's comments will be popular here, but the Assembly members' response to his suggestions for independent redistricting - heck, any change to the process whatsoever - was less than encouraging.
If you can manage to read to the end, it's worth the trip. If not, hopefully it'll prove useful as reference. (And I wish I could find Assemblyman Parment's handouts - sorry!) |
