The Albany Project has a brilliant run of the numbers from November's election for the state Senate. Bottom line: Democratic candidates got 51.1% of the votes, republicans 47.7%. However, the resultant distribution of seats in the legislature is 45.2% Democrats, 54.8% republicans, at 28 to 34 seats respectively. The average population size for a Democratic district is 310,339; for a republican district, the number is 302,558. The over-representation of republicans in the legislature amounts to 7.1%, based on the discrepancy between their total of the popular vote and their number of seats, or, read differently, gives them a representation that is 26% higher than they would have been entitled to if the popular vote were the controlling factor.
Theodore Roosevelt once quipped that the state Senate is constitutionally republican, and so it has been since almost beyond living memory. The question should be whether that is a sufficient legal shield for Joe Bruno's well-crafted majority-protection scheme. There appear to be two legal bases for challenging the districts of the state Senate: one man, one vote and the 14th amendment's guarantees as spelled out in the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court has historically been reluctant to overturn political gerrymanders except as they affect the rights of minorities. For example, the court upheld DeLay's Texas redistricting, with the exception of a single district in West Texas that it held diluted minority voting strength. Similar rulings have come down for North Carolina and Georgia.
The Voting Rights Act also covers three jurisdictions in New York State: New York, Kings and Bronx counties. Arguably, Bruno's gerrymander dilutes the representation of minority voters in these counties at the state level. There is a tool here, waiting to be used.
