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EDITOR'S NOTE:  Schmitt, Ciampoli and Ciotti probably used this video as the blueprint for Nassau. Thus far, what's legal depends on which party the judge(s) are from or which party nominated the judge(s). GOP bosses picked the representative of your choice for Elmont's new LD, you know the one that looks like the Nassau County Buffer Strip.  The LD that is long and narrow, the LD that protects the rest of Nassau County from those invading NYC progressive voters. Do you know who the candidate of "YOUR" choice is?

The Nassau County redistricting case heads into the home stretch this coming week as the parties prepare to argue in Albany before the State's highest court, the Court of Appeals.  The attached blog piece from Newsday, pretty well summarizes the events thus far.

The legal discussion. in the court opinions and elsewhere, has focused on inconsistencies in the statutes adopted almost a decade ago by the County Legislature.  On the face of it, taken separately, those statutes provide inconsistent procedures and emphasize different values. Proper draftsmanship at the outset would have avoided that result. Similarly, the better part of a decade (with Democrats in control) was available to review those statutes and cure the inconsistencies. That was not done or initiated by either the Democrats or the Republicans.

Unfortunately, the legal discussion, at the State level has missed two important additional issues:

• The process of redrawing the district lines was corrupt from beginning to end. The people of Nassau County deserve more. It is ironic that a redistricting process, intended to ensure that every resident gets equal representation, was commenced by completely excluding all voters represented by Democrats (their representatives were not permitted to participate in the drafting of the redistricting lines), was continued by giving them only one option (the clearly partisan one drawn up in a back room by a Republican attorney and a computer), and was concluded by judicial votes along party lines. Isn't Democracy grand?  The need to give proportional representation was deemed by the Grand Old Party to be so urgent, that we could not afford to waste the time to permit a substantial portion of the legislators to substantively participate in the process! Who is kidding whom, and why isn't that the top issue in all of this, factually and legally? What an irony!!
• Happily, private citizens commenced a legal action in Federal District Court to demonstrate how the selective redrawing of district lines improperly impacted protected minorities by making no effort to preserve established voting communities, and by failing to allow sufficient time to permit the geographic re-generation of voting interest groups in re-districted areas.  Notably, the two statutory provisions that the Republicans ignored would have helped avoid that result.

One wonders why this, also, is not the subject of discussion in the State appeal, since the very reason advanced by the Republicans relates to a claimed need to immediately comply with Federal redistricting requirements. One wonders how much other poor draftsmanship, on the broad range of legislative subjects, is waiting like a hidden trap for the production of more needless controversy, expense and regret.  The County ought have an ongoing legislative review commission to try to clear up such messes that exist and prevent them in the future. It is probable that some of our local law schools would be happy to become involved in the non-partisan work of such a commission.

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