News Coverage on Redistricting Population Deviation

NYPIRG’s Bill “Numbers” Mahoney is out with his quick and dirty appraisal of the just-released Senate and Assembly maps — and it ain’t pretty.

“While judging this set of proposed maps by this yardstick, the Senate’s maps are clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history,” Mahoney said in an email sent to reporters. “The Assembly’s are slightly better than 2002’s final maps, but fall far short of providing mathematically equal representation.”

Mahoney finds that 67 of 150 Assembly deviate 3 percent or more from the ideal population, while almost all of the Senate districts – 50 out of 62 - deviate from that figure.

He also compared this year’s typical deviation to the last three rounds of redistricting, in 2002, 1992 and 1984. Here’s what he found.

Senate: Districts 3% or further from ideal population:

1984: 0

1992: 0

2002: 19

2012: 50

Senate: Districts within 1% of ideal population (as proposed in Gov. Cuomo’s bill)

1984: 44 out of 61

1992: 47 out of 61

2002: 11 out of 62

2012: 3 out of 63

Assembly: Districts 3% or further from ideal population:

1984: 15

1992: 49

2002: 70

2012: 67

Assembly: Districts within 1% of ideal population:

1984: 92

1992: 46

2002: 18

2012: 26

UPDATE:

A Senate Republican source calls in to note that the Supreme Court’s standard for deviation between districts is actually 5 percent — two percent greater than the proposed maps.