From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Adelaide.

Over the past decade, Republicans have successfully redrawn congressional districts across the country to their political advantage.

Now, Democrats in New York say it's time to use the same playbook.

A stead harden spoke with our colleague, Nick Vandos.

It's Thursday, September 23rd.

So Nick, you're in New York now. Was there not enough good breakfast sandwiches in Washington DC for your liking?

The big ol' scene couldn't keep up. So I decided I needed to just start looking a little further afield.

So you trade at low cows, but the fight in Washington was about things like voting rights and jerry mandering.

That seems to be what's happening in New York also.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, literally I spent a lot of my spring and summer really focused on Democrats pushing Congress to try and pass this major voting rights legislation,

which also included a big provision that would have outlawed jerrymandering of congressional districts across the country.

And lo and behold, I get up here to New York to start my new job.

And that's the first story that smacks me right in the face. I mean, New York, it turns out, is in the thick of it and is going to be a very big part of the national story on jerrymandering and elections in this coming year.

What is happening in New York specifically related to jerrymandering?

So this year in New York, like every other state in the country got back detailed population data from the 2020 census.

And the constitution says that once this data is in hand showing where people have moved and populations have increased in decline, every state has to go and redraw its congressional and legislative districts.

And so where you lay the lines could go a long way in determining who's going to control the house of representatives in DC right now.

That's the Democrats by only the slimest margins and Republicans think they have a good shot in the 2022 midterms to retake control the house.

And the redistricting process could really either help them do that or make it harder for them to do that depending on who gets the upper hand.

Right. So coming out of the census, state legislatures are empowered to draw these new maps and those maps will develop the sort of rules of the game when we think about the midterms next year.

But that's happening all across the country and states. What specifically is different here about New York?

Yeah, so there's a couple of things I think that are really interesting about New York and we'll tell us something about this whole process.

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