Good article, silly suggestion
The City paper has a pretty good piece on the disaster that is New York State government. This is just silly, though:
In place of endorsements, then, for the State Assembly and State Senate we suggest that voters join the citizen reform movement and write in the word “reform” on the ballot. It’s easy to do that on voting machines. There’s a tab above individual offices at the top of the machine; push that up to expose paper for the write-in vote. The slot will close automatically when you pull the red lever to record all of your votes.
Losers talk about pie-in-the-sky write-in campaigns. Maybe after we write in “reform” we can all join hands and sing “The Answer Is Blowing In the Wind” together. That’ll show those crooks in Albany!
If you want to change Albany, make sure the Democrats win the State Senate. The Democrats have little incentive to gerrymander since the state has nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans (the precise ratio is 5:3). If the districts are drawn by a panel of judges (or in some other fair fashion), the Democrats will have control of both houses. That’s not to say there won’t be some hanky panky to protect incumbents, but everything I’ve read suggests that it is the Republicans in the State Senate who want to keep the current gerrymandered lines of the state government in place. I don’t blame them — a redrawing would radically reduce their power.
I’m not so naive as to think that the Democrats aren’t a huge part of the problem in Albany. I don’t think Shelly Silver is any less of a tyrant than Joe Bruno. But the only hope for change we have is if the Democrats take over both state houses as well as the governor’s mansion.
Well said.
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