Election Day is creeping closer, and one good government group says that this year’s races show the increasingly pronounced effects of partisan gerrymandering.
Citizens Union, which supports a state ballot proposal revamping New York’s legislative redistricting process, today released a short white paper on those effects. It says that 31 percent of all state legislative candidates are running without any opposition; that figure includes unopposed candidates who also had no primary challenger.
The group also says that 38 percent — 74 out of 191 — of incumbents running for election face no challenger; in 2012, that figure was 28 percent. And 46 percent of incumbents face either no challenger or only token opposition.
Citizens Union argues that the current redistricting system “shields incumbents and drives competition down at the polls.”
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2014.
So run. Get out there. Go to the Board of Elections site, find seats with incumbents, learn the basic rules and start a campaign. You can run for school board, town board, village board, village mayor, town supervisor, county legislature, state legislature. Do it. Declare with the Board of Elections as a candidate and learn the rules. Start with your family and friends and spread the word. Get voter registration lists from BoE and start walking to get on the ballot. Go door-to-door. Campaign like you’re running for President if you’re running for highway superintendent. Raise lots of small amounts of money, so you aren’t beholden to special interests. Maybe you’ll win. You probably will lose and lose bad. But it can be done. It isn’t as hard as people think. Get it done.