NY Democrats’ judge swap in gerrymandering case snubs voters

New York Democratic leaders keep piling on the sleaze to disenfranchise most voters by rigging the electoral map, in clear defiance of repeated statewide votes.

The latest is a set of backroom moves to ensure that the state Court of Appeals OKs a move to throw out the nonpartisan maps imposed last year so that the legislature’s Democratic supermajorities can gerrymander Republicans into oblivion — and thereby leave voters of all registrations without meaningful choices.

Specifically, the high court’s swing voter, Caitlin Halligan, recused herself from the case; Chief Judge Rowan Wilson then opted to replace her with Dianne Renwick, a judge who’s already ruled in Dems’ favor in a similar case.

Halligan is tight with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who appointed her, and her move is intensely Hochulesque, a blatant effort to avoid making any decision that will be controversial.

Wilson, meanwhile, was installed to please the hard-left progressives who sank the initial chief judge nominee, independent-minded Hector Lasalle, with this very issue in mind.

It’s all about getting a fresh gerrymander, even as a new poll shows that 72% of likely voters reject that approach — with a whopping 81% calling it outright cheating.

Indeed, a lopsided majority, 62%, specifically oppose Dems’ drive to replace the maps drawn by an independent special master after the courts tossed out last year’s Hochulmander.    

One more time: In 2014, New Yorkers amended the Constitution to explicitly ban gerrymandered districts and require a bipartisan redistricting process.

Democrats responded by ensuring the Independent Redistricting Commission would fail to reach an agreement, then using their dominance of the Legislature to impose blatantly partisan maps.

Those districts so egregiously violated the Constitution that the Court of Appeals (all its members chosen by Democratic governors!) nixed them, leading to the special master’s fair maps for last fall’s elections.

So hard-left Dems proceeded to stack that court while suing to get a gerrymander do-over this year.

Now the scheme’s coming to fruition, with Renwick — a product of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s Bronx Democratic machine — set to finish things off.

Democrats across America loudly denounce the supposed Republican threat to democracy, yet this backroom scheming proves that Dems’ only true priority is increasing their own power, democracy and the rule of law be damned.