The results are in and...

nothing's changed. Voters in the rest of the state actually dumped some incumbents, though, and the State Senate is now red once more. Being that the Dems are now in the minority, that doesn't help Queens at all. Of course when the Dems were in the majority, we weren't tossed a bone, either.

Tell us something we don't know

From The Forum:

As many political experts have pointed out, the questions surrounding the long-standing dominance and subsequent effects of party politics have never been easy to answer – perhaps because they are as varied and complex as Queens itself.

Some in the borough contended that dominant parties make it more difficult for political neophytes to enter the fray while others said that the traditional political machines have made strides to better represent Queens’ diverse and ever-growing population.

“Newcomers to politics often find it challenging to mount competitive campaigns for state elections due to the difficulty of raising funds without institutional support,” said Rachael Fauss, director of public policy for Citizens Union (CU). “The backing of the party continues to play a large role in elections, often making or breaking campaigns for office. And absent reforms to the state’s campaign finance system, voters will continue to have few choices at the polls.”

In 2011, a 22-year-old Queens student’s quest to run as an independent for retiring Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn’s seat was dashed when the city’s board of elections ruled that a technicality invalidated more than 1,500 signatures the student had collected. The party nomination was ultimately given to Michael Simanowitz, a former aide to Mayersohn.

In fact, statistics from CU underscored that when comparing state elections with city elections, voters have fewer choices, due to the strength of the city’s public matching system.

Some of the troubling stats showed that 21 percent of all state legislative contests in New York City went uncontested in both the primary and general elections in four cycles between 2006 and 2012 while only 8 percent of races were uncontested for the City Council during the three cycles between 2005 and 2013.

And, in primaries with incumbents, fewer than 20 percent of state legislative primaries in the city had three or more candidates from 2006 to 2012, while 59 percent of city council primaries had three or more candidates from 2005 to 2013.

Election update

All the Democrats in Queens won.

The end.

Redistricting a joke no matter how you slice it

From the NY Post:

A new electoral map drawn by a federal judge last week has turned up the heat on Albany’s once-a-decade legislative redistricting fight.

But while redistricting can be a matter of life and death for individual lawmakers, the exercise is of scant practical import to most New Yorkers.

It simply makes no real difference how the salami gets sliced — because the interests of the political machines have already been guaranteed.

It’s no accident that, as Citizens Union reported last year, 96 percent of incumbents in Albany won re-election between 1999 and 2010.

As CU notes, 35 incumbent lawmakers faced no opposition whatsoever, not even from minor parties, in the 2010 general election. (And besides those who died or quit voluntarily, more than a quarter who left office between 1999 and 2010 departed either in handcuffs or under an ethical cloud, rather than via the voting booth.)

Gerrymandering — redrawing district lines to assure that incumbents keep their base — is certainly part of it.

But unless you’re among the lucky few to get the nod from party kingpins, you stand little chance of even making it on the ballot in the first place.

It well may be that no plan designed by the very pols who’d have to live with it will serve voters.

But real reform will have to go well beyond drawing new district lines — with reform of ballot-access laws being key.

Until it does, you might as well toss all the maps in the circular file.