(BrightPress.org) – The New York Court of Appeals ordered a redistricting of its voting maps, a move largely hailed as a victory for Democrats. The razor-thin majority of Republicans in control of the House of Representatives could easily be threatened if New York is able to flip some of its Republican seats to Democrats in 2024.
New York has a specific law against gerrymandering, or drawing voting maps favorable to your party. The state Constitution requires a neutral bipartisan commission to draw them, but Democrats will get final approval since they control the state legislature.
New York currently has 11 Republicans and 15 Democrats. Six of the Republicans were newly elected in 2022 and could be ousted by Democrats with a little redistricting.
CBS News is reporting the most vulnerable Representatives are Anthony D’Esposito from Long Island, Mike Lawler from Rockland County, and Marc Molinaro from Dutchess County. Tom Suozzi is a Democrat trying to fill the shoes of expelled Republican George Santos, and the redistricting could aid him as well.
Lawler called it “corruption at its finest,” when asked for comment. He pointed to last year’s ruling which stopped a Democrat attempt to gerrymander the districts, and said this was just more of the same behavior from corrupt political actors in the state.
In that ruling, it was found that Democrats did indeed “unconstitutionally gerrymander districts” and they were redrawn by a court-appointed special master. That led to Republicans flipping 4 seats in 2022. Now leftists are claiming that the map was “supposed to be temporary” and the Court of Appeals sided with them 4:3.
The Republican majority in Congress is now just 3 seats.
Republicans aren’t backing down however, New York GOP Chair Ed Cox and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) implied there may be additional legal challenges coming.
The new maps will be complete by February 28th and then the state legislature will have to approve them, at that point, lawsuits could begin to fly.
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