Albany insults democracy: Even Texas had the good sense to consolidate primaries when a gerrymandering ruling scrambled ballots

Texas, home to every kind of voter suppression and disenfranchisement and gerrymandering west (and east) of the Pecos — all of it engineered to favor Republicans and squelch the votes of Democrats and people of color — had a dandy of a redistricting year a decade ago, with lots of changes and court orders. But they still didn’t end up with a split primary, a nightmare scenario wasting public money and discouraging voter participation.

But that’s precisely what supposedly good-government New York Democrats Kathy Hochul, Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins are now teeing up here.

Following the 2010 census, when population shifts yielded Texas four additional seats in Congress, the Lone Star State’s GOP legislature and governor went to town with their carving knives. But they went too far and the federal courts stepped in. The result was that the Texas primary, set for March 6, 2012, had to be moved, first to April 3 and then May 29.

Both times, out of basic respect for voters, all of the state’s primaries got moved in unison, including the presidential primary and the statewide contests for two seats on the Texas Railroad Commission and one in the U.S. Senate, where newcomer Ted Cruz managed a second-place finish against a party favorite before prevailing in a runoff on the way to victory in November.

Here, after the state’s highest court knocked down unconstitutional lines for Congress and state Senate due to Albany’s egregious pro-Democrat gerrymandering and its defiance of the rules mandated in the state Constitution, the powerbrokers kept the statewide and Assembly primaries in June, likely convinced that would help incumbents. Sharing the shame and blame with Hochul, Heastie and Stewart-Cousins are Assemblywoman Latrice Walker and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, the two chairs of the elections committees.

They wag a finger at places that block voter access to the polls while giving the finger to voters in their own backyard. They say everything’s bigger in Texas, but hypocrisy is bigger in New York.