Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”
If there is an individual in America who epitomizes one central aspect of our political moment, it might well be Crystal Mason. The story of Mason, a Black woman, illuminates the extraordinary efforts the Republican Party has made to demonstrate that fraud is being committed by minority voters on a massive scale. That false notion is now an article of faith among tens of millions of Americans. It has become an excuse to enact laws that make voting harder for everyone, but especially for voters of color, voters who are poor, voters who are old, and voters who were not born in the United States.
For sometime I’ve puzzled about what an election district is. If you reside in NY State, you probably live in an election district, and if you volunteer for a political campaign, you probably walked an election district. But you probably have no idea what an election district is.
Article 15 of the Election Law, Section 4-100 defines an election district as:
4-100. Election districts; creation and alteration.
1. The State of New York shall be divided into election districts which shall be the basic political subdivision for purposes of registration and voting as provided in this chapter.
2. The creation, consolidation, division or alteration of election districts shall be done by the board of elections.
3. a. Each election district shall be in compact form and may not be partly within and partly without a ward, town, city, a village which has five thousand or more inhabitants and is wholly within one town, or a county legislative, assembly, senatorial or congressional district. Except as provided in paragraph b of this subdivision, election district boundaries, other than those boundaries which are coterminous with the boundaries of those political subdivisions mentioned in this paragraph, must be streets, rivers, railroad lines or other permanent characteristics of the landscape which are clearly visible to any person without the need to use any technical or mechanical device. An election district shall contain not more than nine hundred fifty registrants (excluding registrants in inactive status) or, with the approval of the county board of elections, not more than eleven hundred fifty registrants (excluding registrants in inactive status), but any election district may be divided for the convenience of the voters.
Simply said an election district is:
All political districts in NY State are a series of Census Blocks, the smallest unit of population count by the Federal Government. Census blocks are defined as:
Census Blocks are smallest possible “city” blocks in area, bounded by:
Except for municipal boundaries, which are usually defined by historical surveys in a variety of measures, all other boundaries are clearly visible to anybody who visit the boundary.
A “legislative district”, e.g.
… is a district that is defined by a grouping of Census Blocks.
Each legislative district under Reynolds v Simms must have an equal population or relatively close to an equal population. State constitutional and statutory restrictions allow for some variance in population, but differences of population greater then 10% in each district are not allowed.
Each legislative district is drawn based on often very detailed constitutional and statutory restrictions. Compact and contiguous restrictions are well known, but state constitutional and statutory restrictions are less known. State legislative districts are constitutionally prohibited from dividing towns but not cities and villages, except were the town is larger then maximum size of the districts.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1965, it is unlawful to “draw” legislative districts in a way that reduces racial minority voting opportunities. In other words, it’s unlawful to break up groups of census blocks of a certain race. You can not split up a neighborhood that consists of many census blocks of African Americans or Asian into multiple legislative districts. All legislative districts are subject to review by the US Department of Justice to assure there is no dilution of minority votes.
Often legislative districts are drawn by partisan bodies with ideological agendas in mind. Usually when legislative districts are drawn, there is a lot of consideration of past election results and partisan enrollments. While it’s impossible to know how each census block will vote (as voting enrollment is broken down by election district), and census blocks change every ten years prior to reapportionment, one can make an educated guess on how people in a certain neighborhood will vote in the future.
Legislative districts are simply roughly equal population groupings of census blocks, taking in consideration of legal restrictions and political considerations.
After reapportionment of congress, the state legislature, county legislatures, and city wards has been approved by each body, Election Districts are re-drawn. All areas in the same congress, state senate, state assembly, county legislature, city ward, and municipality are grouped together.
If there less then 950 active voters in the resulting districts, then the district consists of those grouping of areas. Active voters are those who have voted in one election since the prior two gubernatorial elections. In 2012, a voter would have to vote once between 2006-2011 to be considered active. If a district consists of more then 950 active voters it must be broken up after the lines are drawn. There is no political advantage by breaking up common districts already drawn, so it’s more done as matter of convenience and simplicity.
Having more then 950 active voters one election district would lead to long lines at polling place, and would not provide for particularly useful election results for further analysis. The election law allows an election district to grow to 1,150 active voters between redistricting of legislative districts, however if it grows beyond that number, it must be split into multiple districts.
Election districts aren’t generally drawn for political purposes. All the potentially controversial work was done in drawing the various legislative districts, so drawing election districts really not that important, even if the results of elections are often used to predict future results.
The political system was created by incumbent politicians and their predecessors. The rules were written specifically to tilt the system in their favor, to make it easier for them to be re-elected or at least their party and members of the public that look and think like them. Many of the methods of rigging elections are hundreds of years old — the political districts most people live in, such as state, county, and town lines haven’t changed in decades if not centuries.
People frequently talk about redistricting as a way elections are rigged. Gerrymandering is a time honored method of rigging elections, predating Governor Elbridge Gerry by many years. After all, it only makes sense that incumbents would try to both perpetuate their own re-election or ensure that people that look and think like them get elected in office. It makes sense to point that form of electoral rigging, as it’s a very explicit and contemporary way of rigging elections.
But there is a more pernicious form of election rigging that has been around a lot longer — state, county, and town lines. Long established, they often group or split up like minded voters. The electoral college and state laws are all about reinforcing this form of rigging. After all, if you live in New York State, and you were planning to just to vote for Donald Trump, you might as well just stay home. The same is true for voting for Joe Biden in Texas. The system is rigged with the Electoral College, so your vote won’t count. But maybe there are competitive races down ticket to vote for or maybe your just wasting your time. Reformers call for eliminating the electoral college, but you’ll be still stuck with a Republican or Democratic legislature based on the long-established majority in your state.
Plus, the rules for voting are created by one party or another. Don’t lie to yourself — in Democratic-controlled states, Democrats are busy finding ways to make it easier for Democrats to vote and harder for Republican to vote. In Republican-states the opposite is happening. Each demographic group has preferred ways to participate in elections, and it certainly is easy enough for legislatures and boards of elections to place polling sites, set hours, and ballot rules in way that benefit their own party. If it is discovered that there is a way the minority party is screwing up their ballot or is more inconvenienced in voting, then the majority is happy to implement it. Likewise, majority parties are more then happy to make it easier for their own voters to get out and vote.
Go out and vote, paying careful attention to special rules for your local area implemented. Especially if voting is free and convenient — there is a polling place located near home or work. Mainly because there isn’t much other choice, if you want to have some impact around the margin in close races. Voters have some say in elections, but they should be aware are playing in a rigged system. Chances are that their voices won’t be heard, but what’s the harm in participating in a system that doesn’t cost much in time or money? Hey, you never know, say the riggers of the NYS Lottery.
Clearly the most effective form of voting doesn’t occur at the polls or in elections. If the system is rigged to pick a particular candidate in a region, Americans are still free to choose where they want to live and associate with. Like it or not, the most popular and effective form of voting in America is with people’s own feet. Do you support Joe Biden? Move to New York or California. Support Donald Trump? Move to Texas or Tennessee. Don’t put your faith in the ballot box or the politicians, put your faith in yourself, and take responsibility for your own life.
I really don’t get the Conservative Party’s opposition to making it easier to vote. Shouldn’t it be easy as possible to vote — as voting for individual is a pretty low value activity for any one individual.
Voting after all feels good, but probably doesn’t have much of an impact on your life, as one vote doesn’t change much at all except in the most exceptional cases, and even then, it’s mostly randomness that defines the winner. If you make it too difficult to vote, then why bother?
I know look forward to having the ballot mailed to me before each election, so I can just drop off the completed ballot at my convenience, as any polling or early vote site.
I like the idea of being able to register as a permanent absentee voter, and having my ballot mailed to me prior to every election. Then I will have several convenient options when to comes to voting:
That way I don’t have to worry or plan ahead should I be out of town on Election Day. I’ll have the ballot whether or not I need it or not. That said, I think I’d much rather fill out my ballot from the privacy of my home, then in a flimsy privacy booth with peering eyes around, and having to manually stuff it in the machine.
Hopefully this will be the last time I have to do this in person ever again.
Next year if the Consituitional Admendment passes I’ll become a permanent absentee voter and I can choose if I feel like it to either vote on the machine, drop off my ballot or mail it in.
I voted Republicans for County Clerk and County Coroner. I feel like a Republican County Coroner would be better at his job, especially with the Sheriff being Democratic. Likewise, I think the last really good County Clerk was that housewife from Manning Boulevard, Theresa Cooke. She hired really talented people back in the day. I did split the ticket and voted for the rest of the democrats though.