New York Democrats are once again trying to gerrymander the state’s congressional lines to their advantage, but unlike other states that have rushed into mid-decade redistricting fights, New York cannot simply pick up the pen and draw a new map in time for the 2026 mid-term elections.

The obstacle is New York’s own Constitution, which generally ties redistricting to the decennial census and channels congressional line-drawing through a prescribed redistricting process. That structure is now forcing Democrats into a slower and more cumbersome path: amending the State Constitution before they can pursue another mid-decade congressional map.(RELATED: JB Pritzker Will Soon Learn He Can’t Have It All)

The current fight follows New York’s already messy post-2020 redistricting cycle. Democrats first attempted an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map after the 2020 census, but that plan was struck down as illegal by the state courts.

A court-drawn map was then used for the 2022 elections, and Republicans performed unexpectedly well under those lines, expanding their New York delegation to 11 seats and winning six districts that President Biden had carried in 2020. After further litigation, the state’s redistricting process reopened again ahead of 2024.

The Independent Redistricting Commission submitted a new congressional plan, which the Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected before approving its own replacement map. That 2024 map allowed Democrats some modest gains, but it fell short of the more aggressive partisan redraw many Democrats had wanted. In other words, New York Democrats already had a second bite of the (big) apple and still somehow failed to accomplish a complete Democrat-gerrymander.

Now, after watching Republican-led states pursue mid-decade redraws, envious New York Democrats want authority to do the same. But this authority must come from amending the Constitution of New York, and so New York Democrats have advanced a proposed amendment to do just that.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow New York to respond in kind if another state redraws its congressional map more than once in a decade outside a court order. Because other states have already redrawn their maps mid-decade, the proposed amendment appears to permit an automatic mid-decade redraw in New York upon enactment.

The proposed amendment would not appear to eliminate the redistricting commission for ordinary decennial redistricting. Instead, it would create a separate mid-decade process for congressional maps that, once available, would allow the Legislature to draw new lines outside the standard commission process while still applying certain constitutional districting principles.

Unfortunately for New York Democrats the timeline is the catch. A New York constitutional amendment must pass two separately elected Legislatures and then be approved by voters. That means the current proposal cannot affect the 2026 elections.

The amendment has received only its first legislative approval, but it still must pass the Legislature again next year and then be approved by voters in 2027 before New York Democrats could possibly use it for the 2028 cycle—assuming there is enough time to redistrict after approval.

If this sounds like déjà vu, that’s because it is reminiscent Virginia Democrats’ failed efforts to gerrymander this year. Like its cousin in the Northeast, Virginia also has a constitutionally dictated redistricting process, including a redistricting commission, that needs to be bypassed via constitutional amendment in order to redistrict mid-decade.

But, unlike New York, Virginia Democrats rushed the process in order to effectuate their gerrymander in time for the 2026 mid-term elections and their gerrymandering efforts were soundly rejected by both the Virginia Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court accordingly.

In their bloodlust for gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections Virginia Democrats rushed, failed follow the proper procedures required to amend their constitution, and suffered an astounding defeat because of that.

To avoid the same fate, New York Democrats are forced to cede the 2026 mid-term elections to follow New York’s similarly tedious constitutional amendment process—meaning their gerrymander can only impact the 2028 elections.

At that point, New York would be less than two years from the 2030 census and the next regularly scheduled round of redistricting, during which New York is currently projected to lose a congressional seat regardless.

That timing highlights the central problem. After years of litigation, court intervention, commission activity, and legislative map-drawing, New York Democrats are now proposing another round of costly constitutional and redistricting fights for a map that may only last one election before the 2030 census starts the process all over again.

While Virginia Democrats’ redistricting debacle cost them more than $60 million in messaging and cost Virginia taxpayers well over $5 million to hold a needless referendum, New York Democrats’ renewed gerrymandering efforts could eclipse those figures.

While it is not clear what the final cost of New York redistricting will be, during their previous redistricting efforts in 2024, New York Democrats wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars – mostly spent on lawyers. Given the stakes, their current effort could eclipse those figures – all for only a few years’ worth of advantage. This is not what winning the Redistricting War looks like, and New York taxpayers will bear the burden of Democrats’ desperation.

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