According to Steve Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate School’s Center for Urban Research, the new New York state Senate maps drawn by Special Master Jonathan Cervas are definitely better than the current state Senate maps drawn in 2012.
But there’s a caveat.
“It would have been hard to draw worse lines,” Romalewski told Capital Tonight. “Rochester was cut up to pieces; Syracuse was also really weird and badly gerrymandered.”
Romalewski discussed the genesis of the state Senate lines drawn in 2012 and the deal that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo brokered with the state Legislature to create the Independent Redistricting Commission.
While the new maps are better, Romalewski said there are still some crazy lines found throughout the state.
“We’ll see what the local residents think and what their concerns are," he said.
The CUNY Graduate Center’s Redistricting & You online map can be found here. The site enables visitors to view the new plans and see how they compare with the special master’s earlier proposals and plans submitted by other parties.
This post was amended to reflect that the “weirdly and badly gerrymandered” lines in Rochester and Syracuse were the lines from 2012, not the newly drawn lines.