Last week's Thanksgiving-eve release of the list of seven candidates for the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals comes on the heels of last month's elections in which the court's handling of New York's congressional redistricting map likely swung the House of Representatives to the Republican Party. In that case, four judges of the Court of Appeals—all appointed by Democratic former governor Andrew Cuomo—handed to a Republican Supreme Court Justice in tiny Steuben County the authority to draw the state's congressional map, with predictable results.

The redistricting litigation dramatically illustrates how consequential will be the appointment to fill the vacancy created by the abrupt August retirement of former Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who authored the redistricting decision. And along with a less-heralded challenge to the state's expanded absentee-balloting scheme—also before a Republican judge in a small upstate county and ultimately decided less than a week before the election—the case also illustrates the tight interrelationship between New York's highly detailed constitution and the unsavory electoral machinations of both the Democrats and the Republicans.