newsmax.com Heinous Gerrymandering in NY's Invalidated Redistricting By Mark Schulte 6-8 minutes New York’s highest court on April 27 invalidated the decennial congressional redistricting for violating the state constitution and engaging in "partisan gerrymandering." In early February 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., signed the redistricting legislation, which was overwhelmingly passed by the Democratic-dominated senate (43 to 20) and assembly (103 to 45), and which would have favored Democrats in 22 of the 26 congressional seats allocated to New York after the 2020 census. Currently, the no-longer Empire State has 19 Democrats and eight Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 4-3 decision from the New York Court of Appeals, authored by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, emphasized that in 2014, the "People of the State of New York amended the State Constitution to adopt historic reforms of the redistricting process by . . . declaring unconstitutional certain undemocratic practices such as partisan and racial gerrymandering." However, neither the court’s landmark decision nor articles in the conservative media have recognized that New York City’s 11 outlawed congressional districts were egregiously drawn based on residents’ racial, ethnic or religious identities. New York City's population in the 2020 Census was 8,804,000. Whites were 2,720,000, or 31%; Hispanics, 2,490,000, or 28%; Blacks, 1,777,000, or 20%; and Asians, 1,374,000, or 16%. This map shows the racial and ethnic demographics of Gotham's neighborhoods. Brooklyn is the city’s most populous borough, with 2,736,000 residents, and each of its congressional districts, following the 2020 census, must have 777,000 residents. Thus, Brooklyn should have had three districts entirely within its boundaries. The surplus 405,000 Brooklynites then should have been allocated mostly to the adjacent Staten Island, whose 496,000 residents need 281,000 additional New Yorkers to reach the mandated 777,000. Brooklyn’s demographics in 2020 were: White, 968,000, or 35%; Black, 730,000, or 27%; Hispanic, 516,000, or 19%; and Asian, 371,000, or 14%. But instead of three districts entirely within the borders of Brooklyn, the invalidated congressional map only had two, the 8th, currently represented by Hakeem Jeffries, and Yvette Clarke’s 9th. And both were illegally drawn with Black populations of, respectively, 43% and 41%. Their combined Black population is 646,000, or an astonishing 88% of the Brooklyn’s 730,000 Black residents. Both districts wander through Brooklyn to include neighborhoods with many Black residents. Moreover, each has only 29% White residents. Though representing the largest share, at 35%, of Brooklyn’s racial and ethnic groups, Whites are not the largest group in any of the three districts that are primarily in Brooklyn. In addition to the blatantly gerrymandered 8th and 9th districts, the other district with many Brooklynites is Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s tri-borough 7th, which was 37% Hispanic and 35% White. But to get this plurality, her elongated district also included Hispanic neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan in Alphabet City, and in Queens. Each of New York City's five boroughs is a separate county, and the state constitution mandates compactness in electoral districts and adherence to county boundaries. The two other rejected districts that include a large number of Brooklyn residents, and that have received the most press attention, are those of Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. 10th, and Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’s 11th. Nadler’s Manhattan-Brooklyn district is the most mind-bogglingly, unconstitutionally gerrymandered of the New York's 11 congressional districts, meandering 35 miles from northern Manhattan to southern Brooklyn. Ironically, Nadler is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. His rejected district travels from Columbia University to Manhattan’s southern tip along a very narrow (less than one-half-mile) corridor next to the Hudson River. It then crosses the East River to northern Brooklyn, where it twists, turns and shrinks to just one-block wide. Then, when Nadler’s 10th Congressional District reaches the central Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park, it widens considerably. Its illegally lopsided demographics are 51% White, and 26% Asian. Moreover, very suspiciously, Borough Park has approximately 100,000 Orthodox Hasidic Jews, who are enthusiastic Republican voters. Indeed, Brooklyn’s very large population of several hundred thousand Orthodox Jewish, who favor Republican candidates, were unconstitutionally distributed among five of the city’s six congressional districts that included residents of this borough. The 6th District with Brooklynites is Carolyn Maloney 12th, which gerrymanders through Manhattan, Queens, and hipster Greenpoint in Brooklyn, and which is a highly anomalous 64% White. New York City’s only congressional district currently represented by a Republican, is the 11th, which covers Staten Island and southern Brooklyn. In Nov. 2020, Nicole Malliotakis unseated Democrat Max Rose, 53% to 47%. But the disallowed 2022 district deliberately bypassed adjacent, Republican neighborhoods in southwestern Brooklyn, instead heading north for more Democratic-friendly ones, including ultra-liberal Park Slope, home to former Mayor Bill de Blasio and U.S. Senate Majority Leader - Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. New York City's current congressional delegation has four Hispanics; three Whites; three Blacks; and one Asian. Finally, Judge Patrick McAllister, who is overseeing the drafting of the new redistricting map, should start in Montauk, in New York’s southeastern corner. Then he should work westward through Suffolk and Nassau counties (Long Island), focusing on compactness and county boundaries. The same constitutional rules should be applied to New York City, and its populous northern suburbs. These three regions account for 18 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. The seven suburban counties of NYC were also impermissibly gerrymandered. Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here. © 2022 Newsmax. All rights reserved.