Hooray for...Albany?
The lights in Hollywood shine a little bit brighter on Oscar night, but who knew how much light they would cast on New York? Notwithstanding NY native Martin Scorcese’s
victories for Best Picture and Best Director, several parallels can be
drawn between the Academy Awards and New York’s political process. The
state legislature, like the Academy, has voting practices viewed by
outsiders as mysterious, if not secretive. Reform efforts have been
ushered stage-right like an Oscar winner who’s thanked a few too many
people in a rambling speech. And the incumbency advantage of elected
officials combined with their control of redistricting ensures that,
like the awards show, that though the outfits change in the
legislature, the people wearing them rarely do.
Eileen Markey’s article in City Limits
alludes to another parallel. The majority of our state's prisoners come
from downstate (New York City), but virtually all the state's prisons
are upstate. More importantly, those prisoners are counted as
"residents" of upstate towns in the decennial census, but they are
unable to vote. Thus, for the purposes of reapportionment and
redistricting in NY, prisoners are like seat fillers at the Oscars:
they give districts the appearance of being full, but they have
absolutely no clout.
This practice has meaningful economic and
political consequences. The resources diverted to districts upstate do
little to aid prisoners, while the actual residents get a
disproportionately large slice of the pie. In turn, less money is
directed to downstate districts that already lack resources and support
returning prisoners upon their release. Politically, this method has
favored Republicans, who are heavily concentrated upstate. By
allocating prisoners up north, redistricters respecting
one-person/one-vote doctrine must create more districts upstate; these
puffed-up districts have tended to elect GOP candidates.
There
are simple ways to change New York’s method of counting prisoners. Some
states simply do not count prisoners when redistricting. Others,
including Sen. Eric Schneiderman have proposed creating a database with
the last known addresses of prisoners, and counting them there. Either
proposal would bring more fairness to the system and help end the
current practice in NY which heaps insult onto injury: not only are
prisoners being used for partisan gain, but their home districts suffer
as well. Or, put another way, not only are they little more than
nominees with no chance at a statue, they're left without the coveted swag too.
