New York voters want lawmakers out of the redistricting business

December 20, 2005, Tuesday, BC cycle

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 425 words

HEADLINE: New York voters want lawmakers out of the redistricting business

DATELINE: ALBANY, N.Y.

BODY:
Most New York voters want legislators out of the business of redrawing the lines of their electoral districts, according to a poll released Tuesday.

By a 3-to-1 margin statewide, voters say that a nonpartisan commission, not the state Legislature, should handle redistricting, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.

Across partly lines, a large majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents in all areas of the state agreed that would make elections more competitive for Congress, as well as the state Assembly and state Senate, said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"It's not even close," he said.

Last month, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer called for an end to the current practice where state lawmakers redraw legislative and congressional districts every 10 years, often in ways that protect incumbents from challenges by the other party. A Republican majority controls the Senate, while a Democratic majority controls the Assembly. Spitzer, now seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, promised to veto the Legislature's redistricting plan in 2010 if lawmakers don't change their ways.

Assemblyman Michael Gianaris said he is sponsoring a bill that would establish an independent panel that would propose legislation to redistrict. The Legislature would then vote yes or no, without the ability to amend it. It's similar to the approach taken in Iowa, the Queens Democrat said.

"All the good government groups support it," he said, adding he hoped the poll would add momentum to the effort.

The Quinnipiac poll found that voters disapproved, 47 percent to 33 percent, of the way the state Legislature is doing its job.

However, they approved, 55 percent to 22 percent, of the job done by their own individual Assembly members; approved, 63 percent to 22 percent, of their own state Senator; and approved, 59 percent to 23 percent, of their own member of Congress.

"The voters don't think the state Legislature is doing a good job, but they like the legislators - state and national - that they chose," Carroll said.

Quinnipiac's telephone poll of 1,091 registered voters was conducted Dec. 7-12 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

California voters last month rejected a proposal to turn redistricting over to a panel of retired judges. Ohio voters also rejected a measure that would have taken redistricting powers away from legislators and statewide officeholders.

On the Net:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu

LOAD-DATE: December 21, 2005

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