New Yorkers must reject Proposition 1, which will not reform Albany’s awful redistricting process.

There are two fundamental, unfixable defects with the proposal:

1. The Legislature chooses the members of the proposal’s new Commission. Even if these Commissioners act independently, legislators are still the final decision makers on any redistricting plan.

That’s right: Proposition 1 allows the Legislature to approve the plan developed by their hand-picked appointees. And if the sitting legislators who will run in the districts don’t like the plan, Proposition 1 allows the Legislature to tear up the Commission plan and to draw its own map.

Recently a judge ruled that the state can’t use the word “independent” in the ballot language to describe the Commission, concluding there’s no reasonable way to interpret it as “independent.”

2. But it gets worse. Prop 1 requires that existing core of legislative districts must be considered in drafting the new plan. No such requirement exists in the Constitution currently. Forcing all future mapmakers to rely on the existing legislative districts enshrines the awful system New York has in place.

The most disturbing aspect of this extension is the lack of communication between the University and the students. The silence is characteristic of the delayed announcement of the housing selection policy changes.

Sam Clark

NYPIRG Intern

Junior majoring in Philosophy, Politics and Law