Internal conflict in the Statehouse continues as lawmakers argue over the redrawing of Illinois legislative district borders, a task that happens once a decade and is faced by a multitude of complications this year, including the COVID-19 pandemic, delays in the U.S. Census data needed for the remapping and concern from Republican lawmakers and many others that the current mapping procedure does more harm than it does good.
While supporters of the Democratic-controlled legislature remapping the state say it’s just a way to account for changes in Illinois population and demographics, the Illinois State Conference NAACP President Teresa Haley says that redistricting is usually manipulative to the minority community.
“Every voice is important,” Haley said in a Redistricting Committee public hearing last week. “The NAACP is opposed to so many things, such as packing and stacking and cracking, and we’ve seen it over and over again.”
Packing, stacking and cracking are all terms that refer to ways to dilute the voting impact of minority populations for political gain.
Republicans are calling for the governor to stick to his original pledge to veto a map drawn by legislators as Democrats continue to storm forward with committee meetings and hearings to complete the redistricting, which is constitutionally mandated to be done by June 30.
Pritzker promised during his campaign that he would veto an unfair map proposal for this decade’s redistricting. However, WCIA News reported on April 12 that the governor signaled his support of the new maps drawn by Democrats before the Illinois census data was fully available; the news station called this change of heart “the biggest flip-flop of [Pritzker’s] political career.”
According to an April 12 report from The Center Square, Haley said in the public hearing that Illinois can’t afford to lose a congressional seat, which it is projected to do because of population decline.
Haley said the current process is gerrymandering against minority populations and urged lawmakers to stop it.
If the remapping task isn’t complete by the deadline, the responsibility is handed to an independent remapping commission that consists of four Republicans and four Democrats. In a WGN report, a spokesperson for House Speaker Emanuel Welch said that the Speaker “has every intention” of meeting the June 30 deadline.
“When asked, Illinoisians overwhelmingly favor an independent redistricting solution over the current hyper-partisan, power play process currently in place,” said political columnist Marko Zukovic in an April 5 article on Medium. “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.”
