{"id":1298,"date":"2009-11-12T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/12\/the-politicians-pick-their-voters\/"},"modified":"2009-11-12T15:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T19:38:00","slug":"the-politicians-pick-their-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/12\/the-politicians-pick-their-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"The politicians pick their voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/12\/opinion\/12thu1.html\">has a great editorial<\/a> &#8212; along with a cool interactive map &#8212; showing just how sneaky the redistricting process has been in New York.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mapmaking in Albany is a dark art form designed to make absolutely certain that incumbents in the majority party are safe from electoral competition (a k a democracy).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The North Country, according to the Times&#8217; treatment, has been ground zero for some of the most awkward dodges &#8212; including the use of prisoners (who can&#8217;t vote) to pad the population in state Senator Betty Little&#8217;s district.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most egregious examples, though, is the 51st Senate District, which sneaks up into the North Country by way of Herkimer County. <\/p>\n<p>That <a href=\"http:\/\/documents.nytimes.com\/redistricting-games-in-new-york#p=4\">district is so convoluted<\/a> that it&#8217;s hard to imagine how anyone could argue that it exists for any reason other than the pleasure of politicians.<\/p>\n<p>The Times is calling for a non-partisan panel to be created to handle redistricting in 2012.  This panel would also shape congressional redistricting &#8212; deciding the fate of our NY-20 and NY-23 House seats.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?  Should politicians get to draw the political map?  Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times has a great editorial &#8212; along with a cool interactive map [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}