Elmont Online

ALBANY -- It was another redistricting hearing, in the same windowless room in the Capitol complex that countless times has hosted tedious debates in the once-a-decade process by which New York legislators draw lines for themselves and Congress.

But there were no legislators leading the effort. Instead, a political science professor logged into a website and a map of New York's 62 counties streamed from an overhead projector.

"I'm going to show you in a couple clicks how we can start drawing districts," said Michael McDonald, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia and leader in the Public Mapping Project. "Literally, it's so easy that a 10-year-old can do it."

Reform groups have long decried redistricting in New York, where the majority Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly have, by tacit agreement, drawn lines to maximize the advantage to their own incumbents. The entity in charge is called the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, or LATFOR. It will hold its last scheduled public hearing Wednesday in Plattsburgh.

But a cloud shadows LATFOR's work. Assemblyman Jack McEneny, an Albany Democrat who serves as its co-chair, said draft district maps would "hopefully" be ready by the end of November. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reiterated a threat to veto LATFOR's lines, an incentive to negotiate a more independent redistricting process. It's unclear if the talks will be successful, or if Cuomo will need to wield his veto pen, sending redistricting to the courts.

Which is why McDonald and Costas Panagopoulos, a Fordham University professor, want citizens to draw their own maps.

"Legislators or the courts could take this into account," said Panagopoulos, director the New York Redistricting Project. "Even if the maps don't find their way to adoption, I think elements of the maps could be incorporated in what's ultimately adopted."

McEneny, for example, attended the presentation.

McDonald explained the Web-based mapping software shows partisan enrollment, population, and racial composition. It suggests amateur demographers trace three congressional districts where the majority of residents are African-American, for example, and tracks whether districts fall into or out of compliance with a 10 percent allowable population variance.

Tuesday marked the last of six workshops around the state demonstrating the software.

Students from around the state, under the supervision of a faculty member, can compete for a $1,000 prize for the plan judged to be most sound by a panel of experts.

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