Topline
A state judge Friday said New York must shift its congressional and state senate primaries to August, two days after the state’s top court scrapped voting maps it said were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Democrats.
Judge Patrick McAllister at a March, 31, 2022 court hearing in Bath, New York.
Key Facts
New York Supreme Court Judge Patrick McAllister said the state must shift its congressional and state senate primaries from June 28 to August 23.
McAllister said that new voting maps will be drawn up by May 20 by Carnegie Mellon electoral politics specialist Jonathan Cervas, whom McAllister had appointed special master of the redistricting project.
The New York Court of Appeals Wednesday ruled 4-3 that senate district maps drawn by the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature were created with “impermissible partisan purpose” and had to be discarded.
Key Background
U.S. voting districts must be redrawn every 10 years to incorporate new data from the U.S. Census. After two New York courts ruled sided with a group of Republican voters who claimed in a lawsuit that Democratic legislators had disenfranchised them by gerrymandering the state’s new maps, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and other officials asked the state’s court of appeals to hear the case. Though all seven judges on the court were appointed by Democratic governors, a majority agreed that Democrats had gerrymandered the maps.
Surprising Fact
Though racial gerrymandering is illegal throughout the U.S., the legality of partisan gerrymandering has been left up to state courts. In 2014, New York voted to make all forms of gerrymandering illegal.
Further Reading
“NY Court Of Appeals Throws Out ‘Partisan’ Congressional Maps Drawn By Democrats” (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/04/29/judge-shifts-some-new-york-primaries-to-august-after-court-scraps-voting-maps/