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Déjà vu? 2 summer primaries could be in store for NYC voters.
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Mar 14, 2023
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Reece T. Williams/Gothamist
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Mar 14, 2023
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There’s a chance voters could experience two primaries in New York for the second year in a row if a judge orders a change to the city’s newly drawn legislative lines this week.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ericka Edwards is expected to rule soon in a dispute over the Council district lines certified last fall after the decennial redistricting process. The suit was filed on behalf of a group of Indo-Caribbean and South Asian voters in Queens' Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park neighborhoods, who say the current lines dilute their political power and violate the legal requirements to protect racial and language minority communities set forth in the City Charter.
The city disputes those claims and argues that the challenge to current maps was filed too long after the maps were certified and too close to the start of election activity.
If Edwards rules for the plaintiffs, the New York City Districting Commission could be ordered to revise the Council district maps, a process city officials say would take two months. Additionally, in court papers submitted last week, the New York City Board of Elections said any revisions to the current map would require changes to election districts — the smallest units for organizing voters — and that those changes could have a ripple effect beyond the neighborhoods that are the focus of the lawsuit.
That additional work would make it unlikely that the Board of Elections could conduct a Council primary on June 27, along with the primary elections for state positions such as district attorney, civil court and local party posts.
The dueling summer primary schedule would echo the experience of voters last year, when the courts threw out the new congressional and state Senate district lines for partisan gerrymandering, brought in a special master to redraw the lines, and ordered a second primary date for August. That came after the statewide and Assembly primary election that was held in June.
The Assembly district lines are currently being redrawn after a separate court challenge.
In a court hearing last Thursday before Edwards, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Jerry Vattamala of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, argued that the city’s districting commission failed to apply the correct legal standard when it drew new district lines. He said the city relied on the federal Voting Rights Act, and not the higher requirements dictated by the New York City Charter.
Vattamala specifically said the Charter requires that districts be drawn to allow for “fair and effective representation” to the maximum extent possible, and that means the “reasonable opportunity to elect a candidate of the community’s choice.” He said local and state law can provide supplemental protections to the floor set by federal law, citing the new John Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York as another example.
"It's literally life or death for this community," Vattamala argued as he described the multitude of challenges faced by the South Asian community in the neighborhoods of Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park, which were split into separate Council districts. The split was acutely felt during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vattamala said the community was the last to have a COVID-19 testing site available in the neighborhood, and that the fractured representation left residents struggling to find support services and even bury loved ones who died during the pandemic.
In response, Aimee Lulich, an attorney with the city's Law Department, said the challenge filed by plaintiffs was barred by “laches,” meaning that the complaint was filed too long after the maps were certified, which occurred in November of last year. She noted that ballot petitioning for the upcoming election had been underway for more than a week. She also said that a second primary could cost the city an additional $20 million-$30 million.
Edwards said she would reserve her decision on Thursday, but is expected to issue it soon. While she asked both attorneys pointed questions, she also made a point of interjecting during the city’s arguments to say that if she found that the commission made a mistake in how it applied the law to draw the maps, she would not hesitate to order a fix.
“I really don’t care that it’s inconvenient,” Edwards said.
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Politics
redistricting
news
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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