Warren: Election Maps Legal, Not Logical

Black, white and Latino factions in the Chicago City Council are feuding over boundaries for a new ward map necessitated by population changes. It could force an expensive election referendum.

These 50 Democrats are chumps compared with party colleagues in the state legislature. Those guys know how to chew gum, draw a map and stick a knife in rivals’ backs at the same time.

The legislators have demonstrated brutish aplomb in undermining Republicans in the process of drawing new congressional districts each decade. Illinois will lose one of 19 seats because of population loss, and the majority Democrats drew the map.

The handiwork overseen by Michael Madigan, the House Speaker and master cartographer, is cannily heavy-handed but quite legal, says a three-judge federal panel that just rejected a Republican lawsuit.

Judges John Tinder, Robert Miller Jr. and Joan Lefkow conceded that the devising of the 18-district map “was a blatant political move to increase the number of Democratic congressional seats.”  But they didn’t buy the plaintiffs’ legal arguments, especially that key federal legal provisions were violated.

For sure, they roll their eyes over a new 17th District linking the Quad Cities with Democratic-leaning parts of Peoria and Rockford, “slicing away parts of Republican Congressman” Aaron Shock’s and Donald Manzullo’s districts “and splitting the City of Rockford, which has been within a single district since 1850.” Bobby Shilling, a Republican, remains in the 17th, but with just 51.9 percent of his current constituents. That’s better than Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who is in a new Second District with just 20.5 percent of his constituents.

And then there’s Judy Biggert, a Republican who sees her suburban 13th District demolished and morphed into four new districts with her own Hinsdale home in a redrawn Fifth District with faraway Wrigley Field. That’s job security for Quigley.

Qualms are voiced too over the Fourth District in Chicago, which was created in 1990 to ensure a Latino majority. It’s legal even with “a bizarre configuration” as it connects heavily Latino Near Northwest Side and Near Southwest Side areas with a mile-long sliver between them.

It explains partly why the legal arguments got technical, including mathematical formulas — “the Polsby-Popper measure” and the “Reock indicator” — to discern the compactness of district populations.

Redistricting is especially galling for Republicans after five won seats last November, with four vanquishing Democratic incumbents. Illinois is a Democratic state, but Republicans have 11 of 19 congressional seats.

Testimony included evidence of active involvement in the Illinois remap by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington. There were e-mails to John Cullerton, the Senate president, on how to “destabilize Republican incumbents,” with the goal “seemingly accomplished,” wrote the court.

The new map gives the Democrats an advantage in 12 districts and the Republicans in only 6. The filing deadline is Friday and some Republican incumbents must choose between suicide missions against Democrats or running against one of their own.

The law’s rules of the road are clear and many stem from the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in 1965 and amended in 2005. Central are notions of one man, one vote — meaning that districts need virtually identical populations — and that designated “minorities” must constitute more than 50 percent of a district before they can have a chance of electing a minority.

The court bought the Democrats’ assertions that their map largely preserved existing boundaries, though its analysis was short of convincing. Further, it agreed with the Democrats’ claims that they had tried to maintain “communities of interest,” another relevant matter.

Communities of interest? Ann Lousin, an elections expert at the John Marshall Law School, is “never sure what it means,” she said. “One could easily say that certain racial and linguistic and ethnic groups are all pretty inward-looking and therefore have a community of interest.”

So the court admits the Democratic map is imperfect but, in a footnote, says the Republicans’ version is similarly flawed.

The lesson? “If the legislature drafts a map that complies with one person, one vote and also complies with the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted, the courts won’t second-guess the legislature,” Lousin said.

“The legislature” means the majority Democrats. So centralized power wins out. Like gambling in Casablanca, that may not be a shock. But eat your heart out, City Council.