For Fair Maps in Lake County, Let’s not confuse Activity with Achievement
By: Marko Sukovic
Illinois Senators Julie Morrison and Melinda Bush, two prominent democratic leaders in Springfield and on the record as supporting fair maps reform, have been tasked with running the Lake and McHenry County senate redistricting subcommittee meeting on April 7th at 3:00 PM (College of Lake County — Grayslake Campus). Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie and Senator Craig Wilcox are the republican party representatives on the panel. An hour before that in Springfield, a house committee will meet to discuss redistricting in Lake County. Following these meetings, the Lake County Reapportionment Committee, headed by County Board President Sandy Hart, are likely to proceed with their own series of public hearings to draw county board district boundaries.
Don’t feel bad if you didn’t hear much about this process, almost nobody has. Even top-ranking officials in the Lake County Clerk’s office didn’t know about it until I called them as recently as last week to give them the “heads up.”
Will the scene on Wednesday look something like what Marie Dillion of the Better Government Association described where senators at one prior hearing “insisted that their goal was to listen even though almost nobody was there to speak.” Let’s hope not for the sake of transparency, accountability and fair representation here in Lake County.
As a resident of Lake County, I am sharing some learnings about the redistricting process currently underway in Illinois and how it will affect our representation here at home. First, some important context.
Following every decennial US Census, state governments and local election authorities are tasked with drawing new legislative boundaries to conform to federal, state and local statutes. The delay of Census 2020 data until late fall, due to COVID-19 and litigation, has thrown a monkey wrench at the Democratic Party of Illinois’ (DPI) plans to redistrict Illinois due to the state constitution’s requirement to draw state legislative boundaries by June 30th. If a map is not agreed to by the state legislature by this date, the responsibility is given to an eight-member independent commission (four republicans and four democrats), with a ninth member added if the commission remains deadlocked. In this last scenario, the ninth member added to the commission has an equal chance of being republican as they do to be a democrat (50–50).
With reapportionment figures from the Census Bureau due in April, the DPI has pressed ahead with plans to meet the June 30th deadline without using data from the 2020 Census. It has argued that data from the American Community Survey and data provided by their redistricting software vendors is sufficient for purposes of redistricting. This reasoning is flawed for reasons described below and likely to lead to costly litigation in both state and federal court. To provide cover for this overtly political power play, the Illinois Democratic House and Senate legislative caucuses are haphazardly throwing together redistricting subcommittee hearings across the state with the goal of providing a veneer of public input and participation in the process. We deserve better!
When asked, Illinoisians overwhelmingly favor an independent redistricting solution over the current hyper-partisan, power play process currently in place. Realizing this, certain high-profile Illinois democrats, running in relatively competitive districts, have made public proclamations voicing their support for redistricting reform that puts an end to partisan gerrymandering and maps drawn with the sole purpose of protecting incumbents.
Are these same elected officials satisfied with the DPI arguments and the current implementation of the redistricting process? Certainly, the public, if made fully aware about them, would not be.
Let’s go over the facts.
The Census Bureau’s most accurate data is provided at the block level through the decennial Census, and redistricting has historically followed the release of this information. A fair map can only be drawn with this level of detail at hand. No other data set can come close to preserving the public’s trust and assuring minority representation is protected. The American Community Survey does not provide the same level of detail and only provides data at the group block level, a larger geographic area that is not able to capture block level changes that the Census will.
To rely on this data alone would be to forgo providing the level of specificity required to make the most informed decisions about the dynamics of our local communities. It would also be a decision to ignore the fact that historic funding has been allocated and spent on ensuring a fair and accurate count through the Illinois census. Protracted legal battles were fought over ensuring the integrity of this data to supply the needed information for this very purpose.
Beyond the substantive argument of whether or not Illinois will use the most accurate data available to redistrict congressional, state legislative and other boundaries, the process currently underway should itself be extremely discouraging for good government reformers. Public participation in the senate hearings has been weak and sporadic. I’ve asked the senate redistricting committee to provide a number for how many people have participated in their hearings thus far, and for how many people have submitted their own maps through the committee’s “draw your own maps” portal.
I have yet to hear back from the committee on these figures, but it would not be surprising to learn that there are more members of the general assembly (house and senate combined) voting on these maps than number of participants in the Senate hearings. At the time of my writing this, only four people are scheduled to testify Wednesday (including me) from counties that combined have a population of over one-million people.
The Senate’s “draw your own maps” portal itself was delayed in its launch and now that is live, it is cumbersome to use and comes with no supporting documentation. A call into CityGate GIS, the vendor providing this tool, also went unanswered.
It is revealing that the House hearing schedule was produced weeks after the Senate schedule, and yet, its Lake County hearing is being held an hour before the Senate’s hearing and the day after important municipal elections across the state. The timing and sequencing of these hearings suggests that this process was designed not to maximize public participation and awareness, but to limit it. We must do better.
We cannot continue to confuse activity with achievement in Lake County. Senators Melinda Bush and Julie Morrison are on record supporting fair maps ballot referendums. It will be important to hear their perspective on the process as it has unfolded, and learn whether or not they are satisfied with what they’ve seen. Ultimately their votes on the partisan maps drawn in a rushed fashion to meet a deadline to preserve power will be the defining component of their legacy on this issue.
The good news is there are alternatives. As described, there is a process that leads to the formation of an independent commission. The prospects of a 50% chance that either party could be given exclusive control of redistricting through a ninth member is a reality akin to mutually assured destruction (MAD) that kept Cold War powers at bay and away from triggering the nuclear option.
A legislative proposal, Senate Bill 1325, should also warrant the serious consideration of our state legislators, and its language has already garnered the past support of 18 democratic members in the state senate, including Senator Morrison. That proposal would also lead to the formation of an independent committee, but this proposal calls for sixteen citizen commissioners appointed by the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. The partisan affiliation of the commissioners would be equally weighted, and legislators and lobbyists would be barred from serving on the committee.
Whatever way the cookie crumbles in Springfield, we all have an obligation to participate in the process. The link to join the senate hearing is here. Going forward, we should look to hold our local leaders accountable and become active participants in future hearings. More will likely come by way of hearings organized by our county officials to redistrict county board districts. Too much as it at stake to sleep on matters as important as how you are represented. If you aren’t at the table, you most assuredly will be on the menu.
