What’s happening with redistricting and why southern IL voters tend to feel forgotten
Congressional redistricting officially began Thursday with the delayed release of final population counts from the 2020 census, but lawmakers have likely been preparing for some time and experts have been theorizing about the potential implications for the U.S. and southern Illinois.
Here are answers to questions you may have about the process and what it means for you, as Illinois plans for the loss of one U.S. House representative:
What is congressional redistricting?
Every 10 years after the census, states redraw their congressional district maps based on new population data.
Illinois learned in April that it would lose one U.S. House seat because of population loss statewide. It’s not a new situation for the state. In recent years, it lost the 20th District after the 2000 census and the 19th District in 2010.
More detailed data was released Thursday to allow the legislature to redraw congressional district boundaries again to encompass roughly 710,000 residents. The release was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Illinois Democrats control the General Assembly and governor’s office, so they will have control over drawing the new map.
While the process officially begins Thursday, John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said he thinks leaders have been looking at possible maps “for a long time.”
He also expects the process of agreeing on a map to take some time because of the possibility of court challenges.
Where did Illinois lose population?
Downstate Illinois was the main driver of the state’s population loss in the last decade, according to analysis by the Southern Illinoisan.
The newspaper reported steep declines in Alexander and Jackson counties in southern Illinois, and in Coles and McDonough counties in central Illinois.
In the metro-east’s seven counties of St. Clair, Madison, Clinton, Monroe, Randolph, Washington and Bond, only one saw an increase in residents counted from 2010 to 2020. Every community in the region except for Monroe County decreased.
What does it mean for southern Illinois?
Policy experts have predicted that the 15th Congressional District covering southern and central Illinois is the likeliest to be eliminated in a new map.
Shaw said Thursday that still seems to be the most likely move the legislature will take.
U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Oakland, represents the 15th now. Experts have said the loss of the 15th could mean the congresswoman would face one of the other GOP representatives in the region: U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, of the 12th District or U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, of the 13th District.
Even in a district that might cover more geography downstate, Shaw said voters largely agree on a variety of issues.
“The main issues, kind of life issues of roads, health care, education, jobs, I think those issues resonate in southern Illinois, central Illinois, eastern Illinois,” he said.
The difference for southern Illinois is a sense that their state and federal representatives aren’t listening to more local concerns like driving long distances to see a doctor or the opioid crisis, a tension that Shaw says has existed for years.
He described it as a largely rural-urban tension, demonstrated in proposals to separate downstate Illinois from Chicago by creating a new state as recently as 2020. County boards in central and southern Illinois, including the metro-east’s Bond County, had separation as a referendum on their ballots in the Nov. 3 election.
It’s a discussion that has been happening for decades, according to the Paul Simon Institute.
“People of southern Illinois have felt very ignored and almost peripheral to the policy-making structure in Springfield and Washington,” Shaw said. “... Southern Illinois has come out OK, but I don’t think that’s the perception.
“... I think there’s a perception that with the loss of a congressional seat, their voices become less and less listened to and less and less respected.”
What are the national implications?
Republicans need to gain just five seats to take control of the U.S. House in the 2022 elections, the Associated Press reported Thursday. It will be one of the considerations for Republicans and Democrats as they draw maps across the country.
Downstate Illinois is largely Republican with pockets of Democratic voters. But Shaw said it’s unlikely that Democrats will try to create a district there that could go to a Democratic candidate. Instead, he expects them to “fortify” the seats they have or strengthen the ones leaning Democrat.
“To get a Democrat in southern Illinois would take some really, really skilled cartography,” Shaw said.
BND reporter Kelsey Landis contributed information to this report.
This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
