If you ever need any more proof that the Democratic Party’s wailing about gerrymandering is just performative, you can take a look up to New York’s Democratic Party.
The grand “solution” Democrats have offered to gerrymandering are so-called “independent” and “bipartisan” commissions. Sometimes, those commissions are partisan shams, as California’s redistricting showed in 2021. But sometimes, those commissions return the fair, bipartisan maps they were tasked with creating. In those cases, Democratic legislatures fight tooth and nail to get them thrown out so they can gerrymander favorable ones.
That is what New York Democrats are doing. The map put forward by the commission is similar to the map that was in place during the 2022 election cycle. (That was the map that saw Republicans pick up four seats and was only put in place because Democrats put forth another gerrymandered map that was struck down). With that 2022 map, Republicans won 43% of House seats while the GOP nominee for governor won 47% of the vote. Seems fair, doesn’t it?
It does, and that is why New York Democrats want it gone. Their previous gerrymandering attempt would have given them a map with 22 Democratic seats to four Republican ones, and that is likely the target. New York could have a fair, balanced map that Democrats claim to want to see in every state. Instead, New York Democrats will try to approve another partisan Democratic gerrymander.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This is how it goes in states with Democratic control. Illinois Democrats gerrymander their districts. Maryland Democrats overruled their independent commission to pass a gerrymander. The wailing and gnashing of teeth any time a Republican-controlled state puts forward a map that may or may not be gerrymandered is all a show. Democrats love gerrymandering just as much as Republicans. They just want to pretend they oppose it while they practice it in their own states.
This is another reminder that even Democrats’ “solution” to gerrymandering is one they will happily ignore and overrule if it gives them even the smallest partisan advantage to do so. The Democratic Party’s guiding light is giving power to the federal government and, by extension, themselves, and they will walk all over their own election reforms to reach it.