Task of drawing NY political maps falls to judge and scholar

By MARINA VILLENEUVE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The task of redrawing New York’s congressional district maps has fallen to a rural judge and a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. That’s after New York’s highest court threw out congressional maps drawn by the state Legislature, and the state Court of Appeals ruled those maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered Wednesday. That ruling dealt a big blow to Democrats’ hopes of crafting a heavily favorable electoral map. Jonathan Cervas is a postdoctoral fellow who previously played a key role helping create Pennsylvania’s legislative district maps. Cervas faces a tight deadline to draw maps for review by state Judge Patrick McAllister — the lower-court jurist who initially declared the state Legislature maps unconstitutional.