Synthesis helps work against "gerrymandering" in Ulster County
The Synthesis group in January helped attain 7000 signatures to enact a referendum
which will allow voters to
decide on the type of districting plan put into
action for Ulster County, with options expressed on the November ballot. Currently,
the legislature is running on an old plan, which
is slightly modified from a plan that was, in the past, ruled unconstitutional by NY State Supreme Court Judge
Bradley.
The petitions
were handed in by noon on Friday,
January 31. Synthesis members
gathered signatures by
talking to people in various Ulster County Townships,
such as New Paltz, Woodstock, and Kingston.
For details and more information, see "Explanation of
Gerrymandering" by Mer
Explanation of
"Gerrymandering" and the Redistricting process in Ulster County's
Legislature:
Every ten years legislators are required to do something called
reapportionment, which is where they adjust the voting district boundary
lines based off of a census. Gerrymandering is where legislatures
ignore or manipulate a census and adjust the voting district lines
strategically to get elected. In NYC the legislators have been known
to strategically inflate a black communities population in order to get the
voting districts lines in their favor. In Ulster County, the
majority's
tendency has been to simply ignore the census and just
reapportion
however they see fit. For example, they'll take a region
with a large conservative majority (such as Marlboro) and put in it a voting
district
with a smaller democratic majority (such as New Paltz) and since
both regions will pretty much vote across party lines, Marlboro overwhelms
New Paltz's democrats and elects a republican representative for
New Paltz,
Marlboro, and for two other regions within the voting district.
This
tactic is then paired with another and more devious plan then
the last.
The legislative majority (republicans in our case) will
perform a kind of
sacrifice, where they clump as many of their
opponents voting population
into as few voting districts as possible
in order to use up their opponents
voting population.
So in the case of Ulster county, the republican party will put forth a
reapportionment plan that puts together regions like Saugerties and
Woodstock and minimize the number of democratic representatives
elected. |
..(continued)
As a result, the Ulster county majority has a
24 to 9 republican majority even though the county is composed of a
third democrats, a third republicans and a third independents. This
republican majority is unconstitutional, undemocratic, and unrepresentative.
And this is why the first reapportionment was deemed unconstitutional by
judge Bradley and why the second reapportionment plan has been brought back
to court. To let the people of Ulster County bring their voice back into politics,
members of synthesis petitioned over the winter break and into the first
week of school calling for a permissive referendum that would allow citizens
to vote on whether or not they think the redistricting is fair. We
collected over a thousand signatures and have gained the respect of the
democratic representatives of the legislature. Unfortunately the fight
for democracy and a representative government isn't over. Judge
Bradley must still deem the second redistricting plan unconstitutional and
the people of Ulster County must find an alternative, non-partisan
redistricting plan that will elect a representative legislative body.
In this pursuit, two major redistricting plans have been proposed.
Single member districts, which would break up the large gerrymandered
districts we have now, would replace them with smaller districts that would
be based around town centers. This redistricting plan could
potentially be gerrymandered as well, and so an impartial third party would
have to do the redistricting. Another and more foolproof system is
something called "proportional representation" or "the run off voting"
system. In this system the representatives are elected by the number
of people that vote for each party, generating an equal percentage between
the number of republicans, democrats, and independent parties. The
advantages of this system include: One, the third parties get
representation. Since this isn't a winner take all system, a party
simply needs to make up a significant percentage of the population to get a
representative (5% per representative); Two, gerrymandering is minimized.
All of the voters are taken into account in every voting district, and so
there is never a losing party where 49% of a voting district is left
unrepresented. Instead gerrymandering would be minimized to trying to
keep third parties below 5%. The disadvantages include: One, a
complicated ballot where you have the opportunity to vote for a number of
candidates within each party; Two, the possibility of weird and
controversial representatives being elected; Three, since elections would
still be held on a large scale, campaigns could still get quite expensive.
In contrast, the single member districts would insure small elections with
inexpensive campaigns and representatives that were accountable to a smaller
population. And so, it is now up to our county to decide on what kind
of voting system we will support. Choose carefully, because we will be
stuck with this system for the next ten years. For more information
about Percentage Representation go to www.fairvote.org and for more
information about single member districts, contact your local democratic
legislator or ask Julia Walsh or Mer McLaughlin.
-Mer (AKA Matthew McLaughlin)
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