We all know that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running for re-election, and his victory over Republican challenger Rob Astorino seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. Before you succumb to apathy and stay home on election day (it’s Nov. 4), there are some important things to consider.
If you don’t care about state politics, it might be because state politics doesn’t care about you. You go to a New York state public university, which means that major decisions about our funding and policies are made by politicians in Albany. Want your tuition to be lower? Want meaningful sexual assault policies to be instituted? Vote for someone who will make that happen. But right now, Albany lawmakers don’t care very much about what students at Binghamton University think, because students at BU usually don’t vote. Statewide elections arguably have more impact on our daily lives than national ones do: Obama can’t pass a smoking ban on SUNY campuses, but your state government can.
Two of the ballot initiatives up for a vote this year will have a significant impact on our lives and the lives of the next generation. Here’s Pipe Dream’s breakdown:
Proposition 1 is about redistricting. The constitution requires new lines for congressional and state legislative districts to be redrawn every 1o years, presumably to account for changes in population and demographics. The way that this usually works is that whomever is in power determines how the lines are drawn. The way the constitution is written now, the Legislature is responsible for determining how these districts are formed. This allows for gerrymandering, where lines are drawn to consolidate minority opinion and disenfranchise voters.
The proposal would create a 10-person independent committee to work on redistricting. Instead of letting legislators manipulate how they get elected, they will choose eight people, and those eight will choose another two, which puts some distance between the legislators and their potential constituents. The most interesting part of the proposal is that the two members who are chosen by the rest of the committee cannot be registered in either of New York’s two major parties at least five years prior to their appointment. This provision acknowledges New York’s rich history of third-party involvement, and provides yet another way to disrupt the partisan aspects of redistricting. Vote yes on Prop 1; it will create a fairer and less corrupt means of electing our officials.
Proposition 2 is simply common sense. The way the New York state constitution is written now, all bills that go before the Legislature must be printed and left on legislators’ desks to “age” for three days so everyone has a chance to read them before they vote. New York state drafts around 10,000 pieces of legislation a year, most of which do not ever become law. The state must print 400-500 copies of these bills, which means around 19 million pages every two years.
This second proposition would allow the bills to be delivered electronically to legislators’ desks, saving around 1,677 tons of paper per year. Think about it this way: You know how annoyed you get when a professor insists that you print an article out for class? It’s like that. Multiplied by 10,000. Vote yes for Prop 2 because it’s 2014, and wasting thousands of pounds of paper every year is ridiculous.
Last year, 36 people voted on campus. If we don’t distinguish ourselves as a meaningful constituency, we are invisible (read: meaningless) to the politicians who make very tangible decisions for our college careers. You ought to vote, and you ought to do so in Broome County. If you’re registered back home and are voting absentee this year, re-register for next year. These elections aren’t about shadowy figures in Washington we’ll never meet making policy that we’ll never care about. These elections determine who is appropriating money to our school, and that should be relevant enough to convince you.