Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=142273
Story Retrieval Date: 2/9/2010 8:13:22 PM CST
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Heart of reform is in drawing political maps, not finance, some say
by Danny Yadron
Oct 14, 2009
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Source: nationalatlas.gov
Some state reformers said redrawing Illinois' Congressional districts is more important than campaign finance reform.
Every 10 years Springfield politicians redraw the state’s electoral map to reflect the latest census. It’s a process required by federal law – some districts grow, some shrink, some disappear altogether.
It’s hardly glamorous, state reform activists admit, and in many cases downright arcane. But for some, redrawing Congressional and General Assembly districts in the wake of the 2010 census is one of the biggest chances to reform Springfield.
“You can talk about campaign finance all you want,” said former state Sen. N. Duane Noland. “But if you really wanted to put the power back in people’s hands, you’d change the redistricting process.”
A Senate committee held a public hearing on redistricting this week in Carbondale, the group’s fourth since July. The General Assembly will either draw new lines in 2012 or leave the process up to a computer and independent commission, as some suggest.
The debate is nothing new, Noland said, but supporters took up the debate with renewed fervor this year after the Illinois Reform Commission recommended an overhaul in its post-Blagojevich report.
Under the state law, lawmakers create their own districts every 10 years. If they can’t agree to a map, the job goes to a panel with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. If panel members can’t agree – they haven’t once since 1970 – the secretary of state places the name of a member from each party in a hat and pulls a name.
The party with the winning member controls where residents vote for the next decade. This meant Democrats in the 1980s, the GOP in the 1990s and the Democrats again come 2002.
It’s random, but the all-or-nothing approach lets parties protect incumbents and cluster blocs of opposition voters, said John S. Jackson with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. The result often is uncompetitive elections, he said.
“It’s human behavior,” said Jackson, who worked on the issue for then Secretary of State George Ryan after the 1990 census. The longtime political expert said he wants to leave redistricting to a computer to make it less subjective. Iowa and New Jersey both use such systems.
For instance, in 1992, Republicans altered Noland’s Senate district to give him an easy re-election. A decade later, a Democratic-controlled group literally sought to erase him from office.
“My party drew the short straw,” said the Republican, who did not run in 2002 and now sits on the Illinois Reform Commission. “You wake up one day and you realize you have a lot of choices. But none of them are any good.”
Some gerrymandering is inevitable, supporters note. The 1965 Voting Rights Act requires representation for blocs of minority voters, a practice that creates anomalies like U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s (D-Chicago) thin, C-shaped district around Chicago.
A computer system very well may be the answer, said state Sen. Michael Bond (D-Grayslake), a newly elected Democrat. But the state needs to take it’s time, he said.
“Those computers and formulas and that agency will need to report to someone,” said Bond, who serves on the redistricting committee. “It ultimately comes down to who picks the picker.”
SIU’s Jackson said some Democrats may not want to tinker with the process. They control the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Governor’s Mansion. If that holds past 2010, the Democrats could draw the map without bipartisan input.
There’s another issue, supporter’s said. How do you get people to care about a map?
“The average citizen, they see what happens, they get outraged for a week or two, and life goes on – and it should,” said Noland, who now heads the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives. “But we repeat the same mistake every decade. ‘I’m in power, and I’m an incumbent, and I’ve got bigger fish to fry. I give it lip service and move on.’”
