Federal judges affirm Republican-drawn Senate map
Jimmy Vielkind
ALBANY—After a full election cycle and more than two years of legal maneuvering, a panel of three federal judges dismissed challenges to the Republican-drawn map of State Senate districts, saying population deviation that tilted numbers upstate were permissible and any allegation of race-based gerrymandering was “purely speculative.”
Democrats, along with several civil rights groups, attacked the now-adopted district lines as unfairly stacking the deck against Democrats in downstate communities and said they split apart a predominately black and Latino area on Long Island to dilute its mostly Democratic voters into several Republican districts.
By creating a 63rd senate district between Kingston and Amsterdam, the Democrats continued, they had added a seat far from the region where most population growth was taking place.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/05/8545934/federal-judges-affirm-republican-drawn-senate-map
