Here are 4 things you should know about redistricting in IL — and why you should care
Redistricting is a process that can seem perplexing and irrelevant to voters. But how Illinois lawmakers redraw the state’s legislative maps over the next few months could have an enormous impact on the power of your vote.
Here’s a roundup of key questions raised this week about redistricting.
Why is Illinois talking about redistricting now?
The U.S. Census Bureau released 2020 data on Monday telling each state how many of the 435 seats in Congress they will have.
Every state gets at least one House seat. The rest are apportioned based on a state’s population. States that lose population, according to the Census, are at risk of losing seats, those that gain residents can add seats. The U.S. Supreme Court requires that all Congressional Districts be roughly equal in population.
Illinois will lose one of its 17 congressional districts and saw a decrease of more than 18,000 people since 2010, according to the bureau’s calculations. That means when a new Congress is seated in 2023, the state will have one fewer representative in the House.
The news set off a series of last-ditch arguments about how Illinois lawmakers, who are in charge of redistricting, should draw the map.
Little time remains for them to decide, hence the fervor this week between the GOP and Democrats, who hold a majority and will likely control map drawing.
The Illinois constitution says lawmakers must approve a map by June 30. If they don’t, it kicks off a convoluted constitutional mechanism involving an independent commission and even drawing names out of a replica Abraham Lincoln hat to finalize a map — something Democrats hope to avoid.
Will Republicans get a say?
Illinois Republicans may have lost their last chance at taking redistricting out of completely Democratic hands. It almost certainly means Democrats will take another opportunity to draw the map to their political advantage.
The same happens in Republican-controlled states, while others, such as California and Arizona, have removed lawmakers from redistricting altogether and handed the job over to an independent third party.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic halted lawmaking in Springfield last year, legislators were on board with a bipartisan effort to make similar changes to Illinois’ constitution. It never happened, and now Republicans are banking on an eleventh-hour maneuver that would only be in effect for this redistricting cycle.
The GOP says the 2020 Census data available for now isn’t reliable. Detailed information won’t be available until August at the earliest because of pandemic delays, and Republicans want to wait until it’s ready. Then, a special independent commission would be in charge of drawing the map, Republican lawmakers say.
But with little appetite in the General Assembly to pass such legislation, and the threat of eventual legal battles, the outlook isn’t good for the GOP. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker soured their mood even more this week when he appeared to back away from a campaign promise to veto any map drawn by lawmakers. In 2018, then-candidate Pritzker advocated for an independent commission.
The governor still says he’ll veto an “unfair map,” but said the state needed a constitutional amendment to create such a commission. That didn’t happen, he said at a news conference in Centreville Friday.
Pritzker backpedaled from his pledge, said state Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro.
“This is the same song and dance those of us in the minority have come to expect from the majority party,” Bryant said at a news conference in Springfield Wednesday.
What does this mean if you live in southern Illinois?
Democrats will likely try to further limit the influence of downstate Republicans in state and national politics, although it’s getting harder to do as southern Illinois leans increasingly to the GOP.
After the 2000 and 2010 Census, lawmakers consolidated downstate congressional districts, isolating conservative voters into fewer districts — and under fewer U.S. representatives. From 1972 to 1983, there were four representatives south of Springfield. Now there are three: the 12th, 13th and 15th Congressional Districts.
It’s likely to become two, said John Jackson, a visiting professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in Carbondale.
“We tend to lose population for all the reasons rural America is losing population, and we will be the most vulnerable,” Jackson said.
The 15th Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Oakland, is the most vulnerable as a first-year congresswoman, as Jackson sees it. The chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois, Rep. Robin Kelly, has also hinted that Democrats should target Miller over the more moderate Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of northern Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this month.
If her district is eliminated, Miller could face either of two more senior Republican congressmen: Mike Bost of Murphysboro or Rodney Davis of Taylorville. It could put both Bost and Davis to the test of how far they are willing to go to support the far-right and pro-Trump ideologies Miller espouses.
“This will be a real test of just how much following and influence Trump has in this part of central and southern Illinois,” Jackson said, “because Mary Miller has made no bones about her great admiration and support for Donald Trump.”
If Democrats are able to eliminate one Republican, they’ll likely be happy regardless of who it is, said former 15th District U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, a Republican from Collinsville who now teaches political science at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
“If they have three members of Congress and can make two seats out of that by eating one up, they don’t care which Republican survives in that,” Shimkus said.
A bigger problem for southern Illinoisans could be geography. In a sprawling district, they’re less likely to see their member of congress. Shimkus said he used to apologize to constituents for not making it to their hometowns often because it takes at least five and a half hours to drive the 15th from north to south.
“The people in the district know it, when you have to cover one third of the state of Illinois, it’s almost impossible,” Shimkus said.
What does redistricting mean for Black and brown communities?
Drawing political boundaries for racial reasons isn’t allowed under federal law. Drawing them for political purposes is, though the two often end up being the same, said Kevin Anderson, a professor at Eastern Illinois University who specializes in African-American politics.
“You can’t draw a district and stuff all the white people in one area,” Anderson said, “but you can gerrymander for political reasons. You can draw districts in a weird shape to put as many Republicans in a district, as many Democrats in a district.”
As a result, racial groups can still get bunched together into super-majority districts, which could be a good thing because they’d have a representative who advocates for their specific issues.
But it can end up having the opposite effect because lumping racial groups together creates extremes. There may be one elected official who strongly supports gun control and criminal justice reform, and another nearby who opposes them. Neither have to answer to a diverse electorate either in terms or race or ideology, and their agendas might cancel each other out.
As southwestern Illinois turns more conservative, bipartisan partnerships could become more scarce.
“If you concentrate minority voters in one or two districts, yeah, they get to send their person to Springfield, but you have almost no influence in the areas around you,” Anderson said. “It becomes very difficult to build coalitions.”
