Editorial: Voter suppression Nassau-style

The Island Now

You can at least say that allowing Republican county legislators to revise Nassau district lines to improve their chances in elections – otherwise known as gerrymandering – is not as bad as what just took place in Georgia.

The Republican governor there just signed a law rushed to him by the Republican-controlled state Legislature that restricts drop boxes, curtails early voting for runoffs, imposes new ID requirements and empowers the Legislature to override county canvassing boards as well as other officials and essentially declare for itself who wins.

The law even criminalizes giving water to people standing in line to vote in a state where predominantly Black voters in cities have to wait eight hours or more to cast their ballots.

The Georgia law comes at a time when Republican-controlled state legislatures across the county are trying to restrict voting, particularly in Black, brown and Native American communities.

The justification is the Big Lie, the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, and it builds on an assault on our democracy seen most dramatically in the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6.

Nassau County is also not alone in its use of gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is as old as the republic and has been used by both parties across the country to tilt the election playing field in favor of one political party.

But the possibility of its continued use in Nassau is still especially problematic.

Why?

There is a strong likelihood that whichever party wins a majority of the county’s 19 seats this November will win the majority of the county’s 19 seats for the next decade.

The reason for this is that the next Legislature will be tasked with changing the voting map after receiving the 2020 census – a once-a-decade process.

And thanks to the GOP’s ruthless use of gerrymandering following the 2010 census, the Republicans will likely control the redistricting process this time around as well – despite the Democrats’ increasingly large advantage among registered voters.

In April 2011, less than a month after the release of the 2010 census figures, Nassau Republicans unveiled a proposal that would have moved about 572,000 residents – 44 percent of the county total – to new districts, put four incumbent Democrats into two districts and split up recognizable communities.

At the time, Republicans held an 11-8 advantage in the Nassau County Legislature despite Democrats having a 20,382 advantage among registered voters – 344,078 to 323,696.

Two years later, with the Democrats’ lead in registered voters growing but Republicans holding a 10-9 advantage, GOP legislators voted along party lines for a plan that gave them more registered voters in 12 of the 19 legislative districts.

Which unsurprisingly turned into a 12-7 advantage in districts with more registered Republicans than Democrats. This effectively meant that each Democrat’s vote counted less than each Republican’s.

This is what happens when elected officials pick their voters rather than voters picking their elected officials.

Josh Lafazan, an independent running as a Democrat, won in a district with more registered Republicans in 2017, cutting the Republicans’ advantage in seats to 11-8 and proving that a disadvantage in party affiliation can occasionally be overcome.

The Democrats’ advantage among registered voters has grown significantly in the past 10 years.

As of Feb. 21, the number of registered Democrats had risen to 434,327, 40 percent of the electorate, while the number of registered Republican voters had basically stayed the same at 335,771 but with their share of registered voters dropping to 31 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of registered voters without a party affiliation had grown from 197,099 to 276,026, from 21 percent of the total to 25 percent.

This raises two questions:

Why do Republicans and Democrats split control of the Nassau County Board of Elections and the millions in patronage when Republicans represent less than a third of the registered voters? Why for that matter do Democrats control the other half and not paid professionals?

And what happens if the gerrymandering from 10 years ago allows Republicans to win control of the county Legislature with just 31 percent of registered voters and use that advantage to keep control for another 10 years?

This is known as minority rule and is contrary to one of the foundations of our democracy. Unfortunately, this appears to be the formula being used by Republicans across the country.

Don’t get us wrong. We have no problem if the Republicans win by fielding better candidates running with better policies. Like when the party of Lincoln actually fought for the rights of Black and brown people. But they shouldn’t be allowed to rig the system to win the majority.

In September, Nassau Democratic legislators proposed the creation of a redistricting commission to determine legislative boundaries after the completion of the 2020 census.

Democrats said the proposal, which included a timeline in which the process would take place and the appointment of a special master in case the commission missed its deadlines, was intended to create a fair and representative distribution of legislators.

This is in keeping with what the state of New York approved in 2014 when it green-lighted an independent redistricting commission like those urged by good government groups and adopted by an increasing number of states.

But Republican spokesman Christopher Boyle said in a statement at the time of the Democrats’ proposal that legislators were too focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, fiscal crisis and problems from a recent storm to comment on it.

County Republicans have continued to say nothing since then despite the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters seeking to overturn the presidential election and the approval of a Georgia election law called Jim Crow 2.0 by President Joe Biden.

Biden and the Democrats in Congress are now calling for legislation to ensure elections are free and fair across the country that includes reforms to address gerrymandering, at least on a state level. It is not clear whether the legislation if approved would have any impact on counties such as Nassau.

When asked several years ago about a redistricting commission, Nassau County Legislator Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) said, “It would be as political when you have a nonpartisan commission redrawing the lines as it is now.”

Given the results of the last redistricting, we find that difficult to believe.

Nicolello and his fellow Republican legislators might consider something else.

The GOP’s share of registered voters continues to fall in Nassau, possibly reducing the number of districts that still favor the party under the map drawn 10 years ago.

So what happens if Democrats are able to overcome the disadvantage the Republicans created 10 years ago and win a majority of seats in the Legislature in 2021 to give them control of the next redistricting?

We would like to think the Democrats would still stand for good government by backing an independent redistricting commission.

But they might not. And you know what they say about payback.

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