| Every now and then, I feel quite comfortable calling Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver a liar. He's usually pretty cautious, but every now and then he trips up with nonsense like:
He denied that redistricting in its current form - which by tradition has given the Democrats in control of the Assembly carte blanche to draw their own districts - has ever created districts that favor Democrats.
"You only stretch so many democrats one way or so many Republicans one way, or the other. you can't change the makeup of the state of New York," Silver said. "Strengthen my hand? No. We can't strengthen our hand. Whatever is stronger in one district is weaker in another district. Let's remember that. There are only so many voters."
Right... and the way you draw the lines would have nothing to do with the party breakdown in the Assembly or the Senate, or the veto-proof majority Silver cherishes.
Let's roll the tape, from Assemblyman Bill Parment, who ran the Assembly's gerrymandering option last time, while Silver was Speaker:
...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....
There is a notion in all of this that somehow incumbents advantage themselves. To the extent that they're able - that they do - that they do and will - they will and do....
I know it's not a perfect system, and there's a lot of self-serving elements being a legislator and making this type of judgment....
Now, you bring up the fact that we allow the Senate to draw the Senate line and the Assembly to draw the Assembly line - this is true.
Though a lot of Parment's talk felt like running out the clock, he didn't make obviously false blanket denials like Speaker Silver.
We need to take the drawing of election districts out of the hands of those who stand most directly to gain by tweaking the lines in their favor.
(And no, I wasn't too impressed by Sampson's hedging in the same blog post either.) |
