NY Senate Redistricting Update

The New York Senate redistricting maps and new 63rd district has been given the OK by Justice.

Use the above link to read the letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The Cost of NYC Politics

The price of democracy was awfully high this week. From a total of 441,233 active Republican New York City voters, a mere 20,749 turned out for the closed Republican presidential primary, an election staged at a cost of $12 million. That works out to $578.34 a vote.

The waste was avoidable, and there is more yet to come.

The vote was but the first of three primaries this year. The Legislature has scheduled a Congressional primary in June and a primary for state and local offices in September. Each of those will cost about $50 million statewide, including $25 million in the city.

All should have been scheduled for a single day. But no. Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos refused to hold the state and congressional primaries on the same day in June. So in 2012 New Yorkers will trek to the polls three times for primaries and pay through the nose for the inconvenience. Then again in November for the General Election.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY Working Families Party and Campaign Finance Laws

A fresh round of legal trouble may be in store for the Working Families Party. A special prosecutor requested by the Staten Island district attorney is now investigating allegations that the organization skirted campaign finance laws in 2009 by providing low-cost campaign services to WFP-backed Democrats through the party's for-profit arm, Data and Field Services, which provides candidates with full service field and campaign management consulting. The revelation comes as the third party gears up for a host of state and local elections, six months after it appeared to have put an end to a tough chapter in its 15-year history.

Last October, the Working Families Party settled a civil lawsuit charging that it unfairly aided the 2009 campaigns of Staten Island Democrat Debi Rose and other City Council candidates. The organization agreed to shut down Data and Field Services and pay more than $100,000 in legal fees to the plaintiffs' law firm.

The settlement was thought to be the culmination of two years of legal headaches for the party, which included probes by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan and federal prosecutors, who decided not to file charges. But the special prosecutor, which the Office of Court Administration appointed on Jan. 12, 2012 has the power to subpoena records, testimony and witnesses.

Dan Cantor, the party's executive director, said he was unaware of the investigation when reached by phone Wednesday and declined to comment. A spokesman for the party also declined to comment.

The investigation could lead to renewed scrutiny of the successful campaigns Data and Field Services aided in 2009, including those of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Council members Ms. Rose; Jimmy Van Bramer and Danny Dromm of Queens; and Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn.

A spokesman for the Campaign Finance Board, which holds extensive campaign records of these officials, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Donovan said the request for a special prosecutor was made in February 2010, when Mr. Donovan was running for state attorney general. An Office of Court Administration spokesman could not explain why the application took nearly two years to process.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Orange County, N.Y. Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican Voters' Settlement

The Justice Department announced a settlement yesterday with Orange County, N.Y., to protect the rights of Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican voters under Section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act. The consent decree is intended to resolve concerns that limited-English proficient Puerto Rican voters were being denied their full voting rights because the county failed to provide bilingual ballots and Spanish-language assistance as required by law.

Orange County has agreed that, starting with the April 24, 2012 presidential primary election, it will provide county-wide bilingual ballots at the polls. The consent decree includes additional steps that the county will take to achieve full compliance with Section 4(e) by the next election held in 2012. For example, the county will provide bilingual poll workers and the consent decree would also create a community-based Spanish-language advisory committee, which would allow the local Puerto Rican community to help shape the county’s bilingual election program.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The Inner Workings of the Political Process

In March 2012, we had a Special Election for a State Senate seat in Brooklyn.

We still don’t know who’s going to win the State Senate race between Republican David Storobin and Democrat Lew Fidler, and the outcome, in court for the recount, has now been in limbo for nearly a month. But one clear development is that Brooklyn Conservative Party Chairman, Jerry Kassar, has become an increasingly staunch supporter of Storobin, and the socially conservative positions that Storobin put forth during the race.

Kassar, who worked on Storobin’s campaign, is likely to back Storobin with the Conservative line regardless of whether or not Storobin wins the recount. If Kassar does decide to stick with Storobin no matter what, that could bring up an intriguing situation.

The Russian community was largely cut out of the new Super-Jewish seat, during the 2012 redistricting maps, and many in the Orthodox Jewish community would like to see one of their own hold the district, putting pressure on Senate Republicans to back an Orthodox candidate, Storobin is Russian. But the Conservative line could complicate things.

Kassar’s situation is even more complicated because he happens to work as chief of staff for Republican Sen. Marty Golden, a high-ranking member of the conference, whom Fidler may decide to challenge instead of running in the Super-Jewish district.

This type of internal political party manipulation is what turns voters off.

Update
Ex-Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder, who has been working as a deputy in Comptroller John Liu’s office, told the prominent Jewish paper Hamodia on Wednesday that he’s definitely running for the new, heavily Orthodox Jewish Senate seat in Brooklyn.

Felder’s announcement comes before vote counting has even been finished in the special election race for an overlapping, pre-redistricting seat between Democrat Lew Fidler and Republican David Storobin. And the Hamodia article states that Fedler, who has been courted to run for the seat as a Republican, is running on the Democratic line – setting up a possible clash with Storobin in November.

The Senate Democrats, whose prospects for holding the seat had been looking bleak, could possibly be in better shape, assuming that Felder actually caucuses with them. It’s unclear from the article whether that will happen — Felder says simply that ” as always, I will work with anyone and everyone who will work with this community.”

One element that could further throw these scenarios into flux is a redistricting lawsuit that would potentially force a re-drawing of state legislative lines — perhaps the best possible outcome for both Fidler and Storobin. But one headache for both Fidler and Storobin is that the vote tallying in their special election could take another month, potentially delaying any decision.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Fair Elections Now in NY

New York state officials can do something about Fair Elections by supporting the Fair Elections plan to limit the influence of money in politics. The Fair Elections plan would help make elected officials more responsive to voters than to big donors by lowering contribution limits and implementing a system of public financing. Modeled after the successful system already in place for New York City, it would free politicians up to spend their time on the issues affecting their constituents, instead of dialing for dollars.

Fair Elections is a much-needed progressive reform that can help get big money out of politics and we should hope takes root in every state. Gov. Cuomo and other leaders in Albany have made statements supporting such a measure, but there is not much time left to act in this legislative session.

Gov. Cuomo said in his State of the State message that he supports reform legislation. Call Gov. Cuomo and let him know that you want him to follow through and make this a priority. Let Gov. Cuomo and your state senator hear from you today.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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AZ Top-Two Primary Initiative May Get On Nov. Ballot

Thanks to Ballot Access News for this post.

An initiative to convert Arizona elections to the top-two primary system now used by Louisiana, Washington state and California is expected to qualify this year. Assuming the initiative has enough valid signatures, it will be on the November 2012 ballot. The petition deadline is July 1 and only another 50,000 signatures are needed.

The avg. voter registration, in Arizona's General Election of 2010, was 1/3rd. Republican, 1/3rd. Democrat, and 1/3rd. Other.

Will the 1/3rd. Other make a difference with a Top-Two Primary?









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Justice Department’s Voting Rights Efforts in 2012

Remarks by Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas E. Perez Speaks at the Rutgers Law Voting Symposium Trenton, N.J. ~ Friday, April 13, 2012, talking about the Justice Department’s voting rights efforts in 2012.

Here are some of the highlights of his speech:

- Our approach to voting rights enforcement is rooted in three core objectives. One is a process objective while two are substantive objectives. On the process front, we have committed ourselves to ensuring the integrity and independence of our decision making processes. In particular, we’ve taken steps to re-establish the critically important role of our career staff. The dedicated and experienced career personnel play a critical role in ensuring the integrity of our review process. A guiding principle of our work is to give every person working on a matter the opportunity to express his or her views, because I believe that a robust and honest exchange of ideas is critical to effective decision-making.

- This had been the long standing tradition in the Voting Section in both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades until it was changed in 2005 to exclude career attorneys and analysts from full participation in the process. Career staff, for example, were directed to no longer put their recommendations in writing, and decision making suffered. This was wrong. We enforce the Voting Rights Act. It is not the Republican Party Empowerment Act or the Democratic Party Empowerment Act, and we do a profound disservice to the nation, and to the bipartisan group of lawmakers that overwhelmingly passed the Voting Rights Act, and reauthorized it multiple times, when the Voting Rights Act is allowed to be subverted for partisan purposes. So we have restored the integrity of the decision making process, and will continue to ensure that every voice is heard and every opinion valued, no matter the ultimate outcome in a given case.

- We are pursuing an enforcement program that seeks to ensure access to democratic participation for all legally qualified voters, and ensures equal opportunity to participate in the democratic process free from discrimination. And we’re pursuing those goals of ensuring access and guaranteeing non-discrimination through a comprehensive effort to enforce, among other statutes:

• Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and its critical preclearance provision

• The National Voter Registration Act, which was passed by Congress to increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote and to ensure accurate and current registration lists

• The language minority protections of the Voting Rights Act, to ensure that language barriers do not exclude citizens from the electoral process

• UOCAVA and the MOVE Act, protecting the right to vote for members of the armed services, their families, and overseas citizens

• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and its protections against vote denial and vote dilution.

- Section 5 was originally put in place because of the well documented history of government-sponsored discrimination in voting in specific parts of the country. Jurisdictions covered by Section 5 are required to obtain permission - “preclearance” – for every change they make to their voting procedures and practices, and to demonstrate both that the change has no discriminatory purpose and that it has no discriminatory or retrogressive effect. Changes ranging from moving a polling location to a different place, to the enactment of a statewide redistricting plan, must be precleared before they can go into effect. A jurisdiction can obtain preclearance by either filing administratively with the Civil Rights Division, or by filing a lawsuit in front of a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia. Under either scenario, the Civil Rights Division is involved. If the jurisdiction chooses to file administratively with the Division – and most jurisdictions take this route because it is faster and cheaper – then the Division acts as a quasi judicial body in reviewing this submission. In these circumstances, if the Department determines that the jurisdiction has met its burden of proof, then the proposed change is precleared. And if the Department determines that the jurisdiction can’t meet its burden of proof, then we will object to the change, and it can’t be implemented.

Because Section 5 requires preclearance of proposed voting changes in parts or all of sixteen states, it continues to be a critical tool in the protection of voting rights. In 2006, it was reauthorized with near-unanimous support in Congress, before being signed by President Bush. However, despite the long history of support for Section 5, this keystone of our voting rights laws is now being challenged as unconstitutional by several jurisdictions. Each of these lawsuits claims that we’ve attained a new era of electoral equality; that America in 2012 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965; and that Section 5 is no longer necessary.

I wish this were the case. Unfortunately, in jurisdictions across the country, both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain. And for those who believe that the country has eradicated voting discrimination in the 47 years since enactment of Section 5, the Justice Department’s ongoing work under Section 5 is among the best possible demonstrations that it remains critically necessary.

In just the last few months, since October, the Department has objected to ten different voting changes around the country – either in administrative submissions, or in litigation – on the ground that those changes were discriminatory. These are changes that we concluded either had a discriminatory effect, or were adopted with an intentionally discriminatory purpose – and that would have automatically gone into effect if Section 5 hadn’t suspended their implementation pending review by the Justice Department or a court.

In Texas, for example, where the state asked a federal court to review its statewide redistricting plans, we have opposed the state legislature’s maps for both the State House and the Texas delegation to the United States Congress because it was our view that the state had not met its burden under Section 5 – the evidence showed, in our view, both that the maps had a retrogressive effect, and that they were enacted with an intentionally discriminatory purpose. With regard to the Congressional map, for example, Texas was allocated four new congressional seats because of population growth, and although most of that increase was caused by a growth in the Hispanic population, the state proposed adding zero additional seats as Hispanic ability-to-elect districts. And in both the state House and Congressional maps, there was evidence that the map-drawers intentionally manipulated the map lines based on their knowledge of low Hispanic turnout in some areas to draw districts that would give the appearance of minority control, but that were actually designed to minimize minority electoral strength. We completed a full trial on the merits in that case two months ago, and we’re waiting for a written opinion from the court.

We are also involved in a number of Section 5 matters arising out of recently enacted state laws relating to voter identification requirements, voter registration requirements, and changes to early voting procedures. In December, we interposed an objection to South Carolina’s voter identification law. In March, we objected to a photo ID requirement from Texas on the ground that the law would have a retrogressive effect on Hispanic registered voters. The disparity between the percentage of Hispanics and non-Hispanics who lack these IDs ranges from 46.5% to 120% – a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5%, and potentially 120%, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack the required identification.

And also last month, we filed a notice in court taking the position that several of Florida’s recent election law changes – including changes to the early voting period, changes to the procedures for third-party voter registration organizations, and changes that affect people who move between counties and want to update their address on election day – did not meet the Section 5 standard and should not be precleared.

A few months ago, a federal district court judge here in D.C. rejected two different constitutional challenges to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and correctly noted that “Congress determined in 2006 that 40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th Amendment.” Those cases are now continuing on appeal, and although the litigation may be far from over, we are firmly committed to vigorously defending Section 5’s constitutionality.

States covered by the NVRA must follow its requirements to make voter registration available to applicants at all driver license offices, at all public assistance offices and disability offices, and through the mail.

States must also follow the requirements of Section 8 of the NVRA to ensure that eligible voters who submit a timely application are timely added to the voter registration list, to conduct a general program of list maintenance that removes voters who are ineligible, and to ensure that voters not be removed from the list for moves without following all of the protections in the NVRA, including the notice and timing requirements.

For example – in the last year, the Department has brought its first two new lawsuits under Section 7 of the NVRA in eight years. Section 7 requires that voter registration opportunities be made available at, among other places, state offices providing public assistance or disability services. Congress specifically designed this provision to increase the registration of the poor and persons with disabilities who do not have drivers’ licenses and therefore won’t come into contact with the other principal places where voter registration is made available.

One of our lawsuits involved Rhode Island while the other involved Louisiana. The Louisiana case is still being litigated. But in the Rhode Island case, we reached an immediate settlement with the state so that it now is offering registration opportunities to all applicants for public assistance and disability services, and is also implementing a range of training, auditing, monitoring and reporting requirements.

The impact of these changes has been remarkable. More voters were registered in the first month after the settlement than in the entire previous two year reporting period. Let me give you some other specific numbers. In the two year reporting period before the lawsuit, 457 voter registration forms were submitted by the four affected Rhode Island social services agencies. In the first month after the agreement, 1038 forms were received. In the second month, 1346 forms were received. In the ensuing two months, a total of 1787 additional forms were received. That is a total of 4171 newly registered voters in the four months after the settlement, as opposed to 457 in the two year reporting period before the settlement.

These are remarkable differences, and they illustrate the critical importance of Section 7. And these aren’t just statistics – these are actual people: the working poor, people with disabilities, people who don’t regularly come into contact with DMVs and other common places to register to vote. These are citizens in Rhode Island who were unable previously to participate in our elections, and now they are.

Our comprehensive NVRA effort is not restricted to Section 7. In the past nine months, the Division has filed five amicus briefs in district courts and federal courts of appeals on critical NVRA questions that arise under Sections 6, 7, and 8 of the law.

We also continue to carefully review data from the Election Assistance Commission on Section 8 compliance and have sent a number of letters to states that are based on our review of that data.

We are working aggressively to enforce all of these language minority protections, including the new determinations under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act that were announced in October by the Director of the Census. Under these new determinations, considerably more voting-age citizens are entitled to Section 203 protection than under the previous determinations. There are now 19.2 million voting-age citizens from language minority groups that reside in covered jurisdictions.

· We’ve resolved separate lawsuits to protect Spanish-speaking voters in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Lorain County, Ohio (Cuyahoga is the Cleveland metro area, it’s the largest county in the state; and Lorain is just to the west – part of the greater Cleveland area).

· A few months ago we reached a settlement with Alameda County, California (the East Bay area, including Oakland and Berkeley) to protect the voting rights of Spanish-speaking and Chinese-speaking citizens.

· We also reached an innovative settlement with Shannon County, South Dakota, which was the Justice Department’s first new case in more than a decade to protect Native American voters with limited English proficiency. Shannon County is within the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and includes part of the Badlands National Park. It has the largest Native American population in the state. It’s also among the poorest counties in the entire country, so resolving concerns about language access in election administration presented unique challenges. We were ultimately able to achieve a great result in this case, in part by identifying available state funds, and with innovative remedies that include a Lakota-language audio ballot for voters who need one.

· We had two other important cases recently regarding Native American voters, one in Cibola County, New Mexico, and one in neighboring Sandoval County, New Mexico. In both counties we negotiated extensions to earlier settlement agreements to ensure that all phases of the election process were as accessible to Native American populations as they are to the remainder of the counties’ populations. These cases involved a number of different Native American languages, including Keresan, Navajo, and Towa, which are all traditionally unwritten languages; and so our remedy also required oral instructions or assistance where necessary.

· And just a few weeks ago, a court approved a settlement agreement to resolve a lawsuit we filed against Colfax County, Nebraska, to protect Spanish-speaking voters in that county. Colfax County is a great example of the importance of strong enforcement of the language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The Hispanic population in Colfax has increased from about 26% of the County population ten years ago, to about 41% of the County population today. And a significant portion of those citizens are limited English proficient – which, for purposes of the Voting Rights Act, means “unable to speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process.” This is a perfect example of the importance of our voting rights laws – nearly half of the Colfax County population is Hispanic, and a significant portion of those Hispanic citizen voters would be unable to participate meaningfully in elections without bilingual ballots, polling place notices, and other election materials.

Our commitment to ensuring access and guaranteeing non-discrimination also includes our aggressive efforts to protect access to voting for servicemembers and overseas voters, using our authority under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (the MOVE Act). Under these laws, states are required to provide military and overseas voters with their absentee ballots so that they have at least 45 days to receive, mark and return their ballots.

During the 2010 election cycle, the Division obtained court orders, court-approved consent decrees, or out-of-court agreements in 14 jurisdictions, ensuring that those jurisdictions either met the 45-day deadline or that they used expedited mailing or other procedures to allow voters a sufficient opportunity to return ballots by the jurisdiction’s ballot receipt deadline. Our work to enforce these protections in 2010 ensured that thousands of military and overseas voters had the opportunity to vote and to have that vote counted. And our MOVE Act monitoring and enforcement effort for the 2012 federal election cycle is now in full swing. The statute applies not only to the general election, but also to primary, runoff, and special elections; so we’ve been monitoring compliance with this law all around the country since several months before the 2012 primaries began.

And to give you some examples, in just the past two months, we have taken key steps to protect the voting rights of servicemembers and overseas citizens in no fewer than four states: Alabama, New York, Illinois, and Texas. Let me describe just two of those developments for you.

In February, we filed a lawsuit against Alabama for failure to comply with the MOVE Act for its primary election, which was held on March 13. The Secretary of State recently notified military and overseas voters that the state missed the 45-day deadline for some of its absentee ballots, in some cases by a week or more. Because of this failure to comply with the MOVE Act’s requirements, we filed a lawsuit and also sought a temporary restraining order to get a full survey of the scope of the violation. The judge agreed with us and granted a TRO and then a preliminary injunction; and we’re in the middle of further proceedings now. Alabama is unfortunately a repeat violator as far as failing to comply with its absentee-ballot obligations to servicemembers and overseas citizens is concerned; we hope the state will choose to cooperate with further efforts in our current case, and we’re prepared to continue litigating if not.

We also recently won a significant victory in an earlier lawsuit against New York. The remedy we received is likely to affect those of you in the audience who are registered New York voters. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against New York in 2010 after the state missed its deadline for sending absentee ballots to thousands of military and overseas voters. In addition to an earlier settlement agreement that provided relief to voters in the 2010 election, we recently achieved a significant victory regarding future elections – in January, the district court agreed with our request to advance New York’s federal primary election date, starting with the 2012 election, to a date sufficiently early to provide enough time for absentee ballots to be prepared and mailed in compliance with the MOVE Act. New York will now have a June primary for federal elections.

In addition, based on our experience enforcing UOCAVA and including the lessons we learned in 2010, we have identified a number of ways in which the law could be strengthened to uphold the voting rights of military and overseas voters, which the Administration recently sent to Congress as part of a package of Civil Rights Division legislative proposals.

I’ve talked about expanding access and preventing discrimination through the enforcement of Section 5, the Motor Voter law, and the language minority protections. Our comprehensive program to protect the right to vote also includes Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racially discriminatory practices that amount to either vote denial or vote dilution.

We’ve successfully resolved two Section 2 lawsuits in the past two years, against Lake Park, Florida and Port Chester, New York – and we also filed several statements of interest in the pending Section 2 challenge to Texas’s state House and Congressional redistricting plans as well as amicus briefs in the district court and court of appeals in a collateral challenge to Section 2 settlement plan in Irving, Texas.

We are currently in the course of a comprehensive review of potential Section 2 matters following the release of the 2010 Census data. Based on this data, we have opened more than 100 new Section 2 investigations in the past year; the total number of new investigations exceeds the number of new investigations opened in any fiscal year during the last 25 years. Some of our Section 2 investigative work also arises out of our Section 5 function. A preclearance determination under Section 5 is not a seal of approval under other voting rights laws, including Section 2. A redistricting map that complies with Section 5, for example, could still raise concerns under Section 2 of the VRA, and some of our Section 2 investigations involve exactly this context.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY Redistricting Update

Karim Camara, the Chair of New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus and Member of the Assembly-43rd District, wrote to T. Christian Herren, Jr. Chief, Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, the following, explaining why they should reject New York's redistricting lines.

As Chair of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, which consists of 48 minority members of the New York State Senate and Assembly; I write to urge the Attorney General to object to the pending Section 5 submission of the New York State Senate for S.6696 which provides for a new redistrict plan for the New York State Senate.

The Attorney General should object to S.6696 because the New York State Senate has failed to meet its burden of showing that S.6696 “neither has the purpose or will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or membership in a language minority group. 42 U.S.C. Section 1973c(a). In addition, S. 6696 contains 63 New York Senate seats, a change from the existing plan that has 62 seats. Upon information and belief, the New York State Legislature also used a different methodology to calculate the number of districts in S.6696 than was used in the existing plan. Both of these changes constitute a change in “standard, procedure with respect to voting that must be precleared.

Problems With Certain Individual Senate Districts

In addition, the New York State Senate plan, S.6696, splits or cracks certain long established and emerging communities of interest. These districts include the following:

 10SD(South Queens) -- Splits off the area west of the Van Wyck Expressway which forms a community of interest with the area east of the Van Wyck.

 14SD(South-East Queens) – Cracks the Jamaica Estates community by cutting in and out of the area. Not compact.

 19SD(Central Brooklyn and East Brooklyn ) – Splits Flatlands area. The appendage of Marine Park should be eliminated.

 20SD(Central Brooklyn) – Cracks both Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. To prevent this, the northern boundary of SD20 should be placed at St. Marks Place. Also the two cultural icons contiguous to SD20, the Brooklyn Museum and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, should be placed in the district. The hammer-shaped appendage which places a portion of Boro Park of West Brooklyn into SD20 should be eliminated.

 21SD(Central Brooklyn and South Brooklyn) – Cracks both the communities of Flatbush and Flatlands. All of Flatbush should be united in SD21. Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery should be part of SD20.

 25SD(Central Brooklyn) – Cracks both traditional Black communities of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. The North-East area of Bedford Stuyvesant and all of Prospect Heights should be included in SD25.

 30SD(Harlem) – Cracks Harlem into three pieces by cutting out West Harlem to Hudson River from Martin Luther King Blvd to 147 Street and by cutting out East Harlem. Harlem should be kept whole from the Hudson River to East River.

 36SD(Lower Westchester and Northern Bronx) – Splits off East Yonkers and Fleetwood, whose residents form a community of interest with the Blacks in the Lower Westchester District. This district should have gone north to the city boundary to capture the entire community of interest in Lower Westchester.

For the foregoing reasons, I strongly urge the Attorney General the Attorney General to object to the pending Section 5 submission of the New York State Senate for S.6696.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Coalition Urges Public Financing in NYS Elections

An unusual and well-heeled coalition, trying to tap public anger over the flood of money into politics, is pushing to enact a public financing system for elections in New York State.

The coalition, called New York Leadership for Accountable Government, is notable for its diversity and its well-known names: its roster includes Jonathan Soros, the son of the philanthropist George Soros; Jerome Kohlberg, a co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company; and several former elected officials, including Mayor Edward I. Koch, Barry Diller and Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook — as well as investment bankers, unions, MoveOn.org, the restaurateur Danny Meyer and the philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr.

The group is also supported by the Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan public-policy group backed by executives from dozens of Fortune 500 companies. The committee is holding meetings in New York this month to encourage business leaders to join the coalition.

New York’s campaign finance system is among the least restrictive in the nation, with individuals permitted to give up to $60,800 to candidates running for statewide office. The median cap among states that limit contributions is $5,000 for candidates for governor, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The proposal the coalition is pushing would be modeled after the system that New York City adopted in 1988: in return for abiding by limits on their spending, city candidates can receive $6 in public funds for each of the first $175 city residents donate.

The Public Campaign Action Fund, a group based in Washington that supports public financing, is paying for direct mail advertising to target four Republican senators who some advocates believe could be receptive to the proposal: Martin J. Golden of Brooklyn, Gregory R. Ball of Putnam County, Roy J. McDonald of Saratoga County and Mark J. Grisanti of Buffalo. Voters in each senator’s district will soon receive a mailer featuring a photograph of the State Capitol awash in $100 bills and declaring, “It’s time Albany put voters before big-monied corporate lobbyists.”









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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