What is a "Fair" Congressional Map?
The above map is not a draft, prediction, or proposal. It is a hypothetical from Washington journalist Dave Wasserman showing how Democrats could limit Republicans to three of 17 seats in the Illinois delegation through partisan gerrymandering. (Photo credit: Twitter)
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Legislative hearings on the congressional remap start Thursday, and instead of talking about the process (which has been beaten to death) or speculating about which Republicans (named Kinzinger and Davis) get drawn out of their districts, we wanted to ask a more rudimentary question.
What is a “fair” congressional map?
Illinois loses a seat this cycle, and the target population for a house district appears to be right around 753,000.
Frank Calabrese, a Democratic consultant and GIS and map consultant says he believes a fair map “respects community boundaries so that ordinary people easily understand which district they live in.”
While that’s a little more complicated in Chicago and the suburbs, in much of the state, that could be by county. In the recently enacted Republican-drawn map in Indiana, just 4 of 92 counties in the state were split.
Indiana is obviously a lot more homogeneous than Illinois, but the 2011 Illinois congressional map sliced up 16 counties. (Not all unfairly, as Cook County has 5 million people and DuPage County has close to a million.)
Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield), the top Republican on the House Redistricting Committee says it comes down to gerrymandering.
"Illinois has a terrible history of creating some of the most gerrymandered maps in the United States,” Butler said. “A fair congressional map, just like legislative maps, should adhere to laws in regard to voting rights and minority representation; should not divide communities villages, cities, and counties needlessly for partisan gain; and it should ensure compactness that makes sense to Illinoisans when they look at the map."
While courts have thrown out cases based on racial disparities in recent years, political gerrymandering is almost never the key to invalidating a redistricting plan.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Foundation (MALDEF) filed its own lawsuit objecting to the June legislative maps and amended its complaint in federal court last week.
It read, in part:
“[Democrats] engaged in intentional racial gerrymandering in violation of the United States Constitution and Section 2 of the [Voting Rights Act]. Defendants purposefully excluded Latino residents from certain districts based on race as a predominant factor, absent a compelling state interest.”
“The General Assembly did not merely fail to create more Latino opportunity districts, it created fewer of them. In the Illinois Senate, the number of Latino opportunity districts decreased from three in the General Assembly’s 2011 redistricting plan to two in the [current] plan, and, in the Illinois House, the number of Latino opportunity districts decreased from five in [2011] to four in the [current] plan.”
Madeleine Doubek, Executive Director of good government group CHANGE Illinois, which has been critical of the Democratic majority’s handling of redistricting, says the public needs more input to make a map fair.
“A fair map looks to me like one developed in an open and transparent process with meaningful hearings and input from the public. It does not look like one where the map is unveiled and voted on the same day or even within a few days,” Doubek said. “A fair map looks like one that was not drawn to maximize partisan advantage. Instead, it is built off of community input. A fair map maximizes the people's advantage and ability to have competitive elections and it follows all federal and state voting rights laws and has compact and contiguous districts.”
Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington), the top Republican on the Senate redistricting committee simplified the position. He says all partisan maps, Republican or Democrat, are unfair.
“Any map drawn by politicians is patently unfair,” Barickman said. “There are a couple of ways we can achieve a fair map, whether that be through the use of an independent commission, which many Democrats, including the Governor, once proclaimed support for. Maps drawn by politicians are solely fulfilling a partisan purpose.”
But, interestingly, when looking at the legislative maps, some top Black voting rights advocates say Democrats actually reduced the influence of African Americans in the new maps.
Valerie Leonard, an for redistricting interests on the west side of Chicago was the first to use the line that maps should “reflect the diversity of the state.”
If that line sounds familiar, it’s because it was adopted as the main talking point of legislative Democrats, even though Leonard objected to their state legislative map.
“The truth of the matter is, in some cases, the Democrats have been hijacking my speaking points, making it very difficult to challenge what they say,” Leonard said, pointing out the new maps cut majority Black state house districts from 16 to 8. “When I say a map that reflects the diversity of this state, I am very concerned about ensuring that the 3 historic majority Black districts are maintained. I know that it will be very challenging to do that on the West Side, but the data seem to suggest that it's possible. I also believe that a "fair map" that reflects the diversity of this state provides opportunities for fair representation along racial, ethnic, geographic, cultural and ideological lines, so to speak. Not only should the maps be "fair", they should be "equitable", attempting to make redress for past injustices.”
We asked both Speaker Chris Welch’s spokesperson and Senate President Don Harmon’s spokesperson what the two legislative leaders believe a “fair” map looked like.
“One that reflects the diversity of our state,” Harmon’s spokesman, John Patterson, replied Tuesday. We followed up asking if Leonard’s claim about reduced Black representation still reflected that diversity, and Patterson did not respond Tuesday night.