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State of the State: The results of the remap are impossible to predict this year

Anthony Man

The end-of-session newsletters dropped in mailboxes will brag about new money for local schools. Press conferences at the Statehouse will feature rhetoric about election reform. Guest columns sent to hometown weeklies will decry high energy prices, at least while the weather remains cold.

None of that matters to politicians as much as redistricting.

They care so much because the effects are so personal. District boundaries can determine whether a candidate coasts to victory for the next 10 years or sweats each re-election. Legislators who wish to run in districts that contain most of the territory they have represented in the last decade sometimes must move from longtime family homes. Others are thrown into somebody else's district and must decide whether they want to challenge friends and colleagues. Some find that mischievous mapmakers working for the opposition party have moved supportive businesses or churches outside their districts.

On paper, the major interests are evenly matched as the 2001 redistricting process begins. Each of the four legislative caucuses - House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats - has been allocated $750,000 to spend on redistricting.

Many legal and political factors make it impossible to make an educated guess about the results. Controversy over the population numbers is almost certain, and new court rulings make it much more difficult to figure out how to form districts that account for racial minority groups. In addition, the willingness of such politicians as master deal-maker Gov. George Ryan to get involved is unknown.

Comments from House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, Senate President James "Pate" Philip, a Wood Dale Republican, and their aides about the desirability of striking a deal over legislative redistricting have generated a frenzy of speculation around the Statehouse. Presumably, this would involve drawing boundaries that would give an advantage to Senate Republicans and House Democrats. Of course, that would require throwing overboard the minority parties in both chambers. Few doubt that Madigan or Philip would lose any sleep over consigning the Senate Democrats and House Republicans to minority status.

It could be tough to pull off, though. First, it's unclear whether black Democrats in the House, whose votes Madigan would need to pass any plan, would be willing to turn their backs on Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones Jr. of Chicago, who is black. Likewise, it's unclear whether Republican Ryan would be willing to turn his back on House Republican Leader Lee Daniels of Elmhurst, with whom he served in the House and has enjoyed a generally warm relationship.

Second, even such leaders as Madigan and Philip, who hold extraordinary sway over their members, could have a tough time convincing them to go along. Each legislator is eyeing the next campaign, and each wants a district that would be easier to win. Someone who routinely gets elected with 70 percent of the vote wants a district that will get him or her re-elected with 80 percent of the vote. And all dislike the idea of having to run in territory where the voters are not familiar with their records and all the supposedly good things they have been doing in office. 

Third, it would not be easy to draw boundaries that would serve the interests of both Madigan and Philip. After all, Republicans drew the district boundaries 10 years ago, following the 1990 census. Although Philip's Republicans won control of the Senate in that next election and have maintained it since, Daniels' Republicans managed to take the House only in the 1994 elections, and that was the year Republicans swept elections at all levels throughout the country.

In other words, the power to draw boundaries does not necessarily mean election results will turn out the way the mapmakers intended. 

The fourth, and most significant, factor working against an agreement is a fundamental change in the data used to draw new district boundaries. This change could make it impossible for Madigan and Philip to reach an agreement even if they wanted to.

The Census Bureau is required by law to release detailed population information by April 1. When the numbers come out, probably in March, there's a good chance there will be two sets, which seems likely to create a political swamp in Illinois and the nation.

One set of numbers will be the actual head count of every person as of April 1,2000. Actually, it will be the count of everyone who chose to be counted or the Census Bureau could find. 

The other set of numbers will be statistically adjusted because of what is widely accepted as an undercount. There is no controversy about the basic problem: The census fails to count everyone. There is even little doubt as to which groups are missed. Generally, it is those with the lowest incomes who live in big cities. Michael McDonald, who teaches political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, says the group that is undercounted most is young, black and male. 

Statisticians and other scientists support the statistical adjustment. They believe the numbers can be adjusted to give a more accurate picture of the total population and of the groups that otherwise would be undercounted. 

Here is the first place where politics makes things dicey. It's possible that the Census Bureau will release only one set of numbers. The two parties are at loggerheads over the issue nationally, so if President George W. Bush's administration has a team in place at the Census Bureau and its parent agency, the Commerce Department, it might find a way to release the head count only and not the adjusted numbers. But with Bush moving into office under fire from many black political leaders, it might be politically untenable to kill the statistically adjusted model. Assuming Illinois gets both sets of numbers, the stage is set for gridlock. Even if Madigan and Philip want to agree on a map, or even if Gov. Ryan can get all four party caucuses to agree, the negotiators would have to agree on which set of numbers to base that map.

Madigan and the Democrats surely would want the statistically adjusted numbers because they probably would show a greater share of the state's population in Chicago than the head count. A larger share of the population translates into a greater number of House and Senate seats in an area where Democrats dominate. 

For the same reason, Philip and the Republicans surely would want to use the unadjusted numbers because they almost certainly would show a greater share of the population in the Republican-leaning suburbs. 

McDonald, the UIS analyst, says it's not possible to tell the scale of the difference until the numbers come out. However, he says it could make a difference of two seats in each chamber. That sounds small, but is enormous, given the existing 62-56 split in the House and 32-27 split in the Senate. A shift of two seats can determine control. 

Expect arguments from the Democrats that they want to protect the rights of the undercounted. Expect arguments from the Republicans that the bureaucrats in the outgoing Clinton Administration cooked the numbers and nothing can be trusted except the actual hard count. Those arguments may be stated with great passion, but the truth is that the parties only see their own self-interests at stake and could easily argue the other side if the tables were turned.

There's another wrinkle to the which-numbers-to-use debate, especially since the desire for self-preservation is a given among legislators. Downstaters, particularly Democrats, might have interests that differ from their leaders'.

The 2000 census is widely expected to show downstate Illinois has a smaller share of the state's population than it did in 1990. That means fewer legislative and congressional districts, which means the districts represented by downstaters will have to physically encompass more territory and generally move in the direction of the northeastern part of the state. Some may disappear entirely. If statistically adjusted numbers mean Chicago gets more representation, that may mean even less for downstate than the simple head count.

Another complicating factor this year is a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since the last redistricting, the court has made it less clear how to apply the federal Voting Rights Act. It was generally assumed a decade ago that minority voting strength had to be protected and expanded. Creating as many majority-minority districts (those with a voting age majority composed of members of a minority group) as possible was seen as a way to comply.

Maria Valdez, a senior litigator with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says the Supreme Court now looks unfavorably on districts based predominately on race. She notes the Voting Rights Act says the minority vote cannot be diluted and that race must be looked at. Valdez and McDonald say this means racial minority districts will require much more evidence of historical patterns and communities of interest.

If no redistricting plan is passed and signed into law by June 30, it goes to a redistricting commission as outlined in the Illinois Constitution. If the eight-member commission, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, cannot reach an agreement by August 10, then a tie-breaking vote is selected, as happened in 1981 and 1991.

The party winning that tie could make the decision on which numbers to use, then set about to draw the maps. 

As Madigan advised new lawmakers last month: "Fasten your seatbelts." 

Anthony Man is Statehouse bureau chief for the Lee Enterprises Inc. newspapers with readers in Illinois.

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