Although the commission is technically independent, its lines usually favor the City Council establishment, which appoints many of its members. Accordingly, at an immediate glance, the maps do not appear to be massively different from the draft proposal released earlier this year, which protected most existing legislators, with a couple exceptions.

View below:

Brooklyn:

The purple election results map. (Photo: Chris Howard/Facebook)

Software engineer and illustrator Chris Howard created this map of the presidential election results adjusted by population density to produce a map that shows a far different picture of the country than we normally see in the simple red and blue electoral map. Mr. Howard posted his map on Facebook this weekend with a note explaining that "most of the country is some shade of purple, a varied blend of Democrat blue and Republican."

"America really looks like this," wrote Mr. Howard. "What really stands out is how red the nation seems to be when you do not take the voting population into account; when you do so many of those vast red mid-west blocks fade into pale pink and lavender (very low population)."

Though people have long been creating purple variations of the electoral map, Mr. Howard said he was inspired to create his map by another series of maps made by Mark Newman, a physics professor at the University of Michigan's Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Mr. Newman's maps used the electoral maps to create cartograms showing the size of different states  based on population rather than land area. To create his map, Mr. Howard said he used "the actual numbers of votes for each party overlaid with population maps from Texas Tech University and other sources."

View a larger image of Mr. Howard's map compared with the electoral map, a map showing results by county and a third map that displays a shade indicating the percentage won by either party rather than simple red or blue below.

Like the State Senate plan that the Senate Democrats released earlier today, the State Assembly plan appears to change very little from the draft maps. The official release on the State Government website, however, provides additional detail.

While the Senate Republicans' map appears to "decouple" a number of districts that had paired sitting Democratic incumbents like State Senators Mike Gianaris and José Peralta, the odd tentacle coming out of State Senator John Sampson's district to absorb State Senate candidate Lew Fidler's house appears to remain under the new proposal.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had originally called the maps "hyper-political" and vowed to veto them, has softened his language on the latest nearly-identical set of boundaries. Today, Mr. Cuomo said he saw "progress" on the new lines, which his staff members consulted with the Legislature on.

Click here to view the State Assembly maps or click here to view the State Senate maps.

However, Albany also released a legible redistricting document last night, the constitutional amendment to permanently reform the process in the future in 2022. The proposed amendment appears designed to lock in this year's set of maps rather than create any sort of truly independent commission. "The commission shall consider the maintenance of cores of existing districts, of pre-existing political subdivisions, including counties, cities, and towns, and communities of interest," the bill reads.

The emphasis of the commission is bipartisanship rather than independence. The composition of the commission will simply be a set of appointees from the majority and minority parties in both chambers of the Legislature, and those appointees then choose two registered Independents to join them. No matter what, however, the Legislature receives final approval over anything the commission submits.

Somewhat cynically, the rules governing the process change rather substantially if the Republicans are no longer in control of the State Senate. If the Senate and Assembly majorities are members of the same party, then, within the commission, the minority leaders' appointees are granted a unique decisive voice. Furthermore, the number of votes in the Legislature needed to approve the map increases to 66% if the same party controls both houses.

As Senator Mike Gianaris noted over Twitter, the amendment does not address systemic underpopulating/overpopulating of districts to achieve partisan outcomes or a number of other reforms good-government groups and newspaper editorial boards would likely like to see instituted.

It's unknown if the proposed legislation is sufficient to meet Governor Andrew Cuomo's approval in its current form.

Update: A spokesman for the Senate Republicans emails in this statement:

"We've made dozens of changes to the original maps, virtually all of them based on public input, and have advanced a constitutional amendment that would achieve historic reform of the process. As a result, this is an even better reapportionment plan."

View the bill below:

One of the proposed districts that has no real impact on what the courts will draw.

Over the last 48 hours, New York's media, including The Politicker, has been breathlessly providing wall-to-wall coverage of the Senate Republicans' and Assembly Democrats' redistricting proposals, which were finally released around midnight last night. Candidates have been reacting strongly as well. One boldly declared a path to victory in last night's maps, while another amazingly announced his intentions to buy a house in the new district.

However, the maps everyone is reacting to are not likely to relate at all to where the ultimate lines will fall.

First of all, even if the maps had any significant legal weight, it would be impossible to predict how the courts would resolve two opposing proposals.

Secondly, and more importantly, the maps have very little legal influence. One redistricting expert told The Politicker the maps are the equivalent of a "John Q. Public" map that literally anyone can submit to the court.

While some may point to a recent Supreme Court decision in Texas where it was ordered a court-drawn map "should take guidance from the state’s recently enacted plan," the maps proposed last night, unlike Texas, were not the product of any legislative process whatsoever.

"You haven’t passed LATFOR. You haven’t passed a rules committee. You haven’t passed a chamber. These are just plans put forward, according to the filing, by three people each," the expert explained.

In fact, the one set of maps that appears to have the most legal standing, assuming the Legislature can't arrive at some last-minute compromise, is the Common Cause proposal, which the judge ordered other proposed maps compared to. However, the distinguishing feature of the Common Cause's lines is the lack of protection for sitting Congressional Members while the distinguishing feature of last night's proposals is a near-absolute adherence to incumbency protection.

This is something that the court is likely to notice. The redistricting expert said Nathaniel Persily, the man the judge is relying on to draft the maps, is extremely experienced and unlikely to just blindly accept gerrymanders placed before him.

"He won’t do that. He likes to draw something that has his own mark on it. Something that favors neither party and is based on objective standards," he said of Mr. Persily.

Another redistricting expert agreed, telling The Politicker the courts are likely to try and draw their own objective plan as opposed to relying on partisan proposals.

"That is what special masters have tended to do in the past," he explained, adding that the only way last night's partisan proposals would have much of an impact is if they were specifically drawn to influence the thinking of the courts. But what tiny bits would hypothetically work their way into the final map is completely unpredictable.

Perhaps the greatest value from last night's maps would come from reading tea leaves from the occasional similarities between the two. For example, both maps eliminate retiring Congressman Maurice Hinchey's district, which could be indicative of the direction a compromise map between the State Assembly and State Senate would take, should the two bodies manage to pass a set of lines before the courts have finished intervening.

However, a political consultant involved in the process said the negotiations in Albany are extremely fluid, and change practically day by day, so even these rare tea leaves are of limited value.