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By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – Democratic lawmakers in New York handed a brand new congressional map on Wednesday that offers their celebration the benefit in 22 of the state’s 26 districts, doubtlessly reshaping the battle for management of the U.S. Congress forward of November’s midterm elections.
The plan, which handed largely alongside celebration strains within the Democratic-controlled state Senate and Meeting, might lower the state’s Republican congressional delegation in half, offsetting Republican beneficial properties in states equivalent to Texas and Georgia the place the celebration muscled by its personal partisan maps final 12 months.
Democrats at the moment maintain 19 of the state’s 27 seats; New York is slated to lose one district because of slower inhabitants development.
The map would make sure the eradicated seat is a Republican one whereas reworking three different Republican-leaning districts into Democratic-favored ones. Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, is anticipated to signal the map into legislation.
Democrats maintain a slender 222-212 edge within the U.S. Home of Representatives, with one emptiness. If Republicans can win a majority in November, they might be in place to foil a lot of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
U.S. federal legislation requires states to redraw their congressional strains as soon as a decade to account for inhabitants shifts. Most often, lawmakers management the method, permitting them to have interaction in gerrymandering – the deliberate manipulation of district boundaries to favor one celebration over one other.
Many nationwide Democrats have attacked Republicans for gerrymandering. In January, congressional Democrats tried and didn’t move voting rights laws that might, amongst different issues, bar partisan redistricting, because of Republican opposition.
The New York map wouldn’t have been permitted underneath that invoice, famous Michael Li, a lawyer and redistricting professional with the Brennan Middle for Justice.
“It opens them as much as expenses of being hypocrites,” he mentioned of Democrats.
Lawmakers have been in a position to move their very own plan after a bipartisan fee, accepted by voters in 2014, failed to provide a consensus map, with Democratic and Republican members buying and selling accusations of political gamesmanship.
Republicans might search to problem the map in courtroom, as voters and civil rights teams have performed in quite a few different states.
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