NY Dems vs. Democracy, Cont’d

Kudos to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie for putting a hold on another scheme to use Democrats’ power in Albany to extend their control of the state permanently.

Dems’ last dirty trick, their effort to gerrymander Republicans into oblivion, backfired big-time. It seems bitterness over that debacle prompted an end-of-session drive to force local elections (outside the large cities) to be held in even-numbered years.

The obvious goal: to ensure that the electorate leans further left, as more liberals and progressives turn out when national issues are on the line. That is, to boost the odds for Democrats in races for county executive, county legislatures, town supervisors etc.

Happily, The Post’s Zach Williams reports that Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, the bill’s sponsor, says Heastie doesn’t favor 11th-hour passage of an idea coming out of nowhere. Gov. Hochul wasn’t taking a stand after getting burned for signing on to the gerrrymander ploy. “The Governor will review the legislation if it passes both houses,” read a terse email from her folks when we asked.

But it’s plainly a bad-government “reform,” making it less likely that local issues play the determining role in local elections. You’d have more voters who showed up just to vote for president or Congress, then guessed on the rest (if they even made it to local races shown on the ballot’s back pages).

For all the noise Democrats have made these last two years about “saving democracy,” the ones in New York seem all too eager to undermine it to boost their party’s power.

Yet Heastie might let the bill move ahead next year. So the best protection for New York’s democracy is to ensure Democrats lose some power when you vote in November.