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The Ultimate Political Puzzle: Partisanship will be the top consideration

Politicians and their aides are rolling up their sleeves and huddling around computers. Remap gets underway in earnest this month as the U.S. Census Bureau releases, state by state, necessary population data.

Better put on the coffee, though. This could take awhile. And it won't be easy.

Think of Illinois as a giant puzzle. Every 10 years, elected officials must reconfigure the state's legislative and congressional districts to account for population changes. They have no choice in the matter. All representational districts are required to encompass nearly the same number of people.

Of course, there are any number of ways the pieces of this puzzle can be put back together. And this presents politicians with opportunities as well as challenges - the chance, in short, to maintain, even gain, advantage. But, though partisanship will be the top consideration as Illinois officials put together the new maps, they will need to follow a few rules. 

First, the feds will provide the pieces. They'll release the results of the 2000 census within geographic areas. The smallest of these is known as a census "block," which, in urban areas, is indeed roughly equivalent to one city block. But the Census Bureau makes this game somewhat easier. In every state except California, the bureau consulted with election officials to align population blocks as closely as possible with voting precincts. This enables politicians and their aides, with the help of those computers, to combine voter registration information and election results with raw population data, giving them a precise picture of the demographic and political makeup of each potential legislative and congressional district.

And here is where today's mapmakers have a decided edge. Before the advent of computers, redistricting was done by a handful of "experts" in back rooms. Because there were no widely available tools to assess the political impact of the shape of any given district, only those intimate with the political geography of a state could put together a map that made political sense.

Technology has changed everything. Census information can now be used to shape the ultimate political puzzle. And anyone with a little bit of cash can put it together. In fact, a number of for-profit businesses have sprung up to help. For just under $4,000, such software companies as Caliper Corp. of Newton, Maine, and Digital Engineering Corp. of Columbia, Md., among others, sell elaborate programs that display and manipulate all sorts of geographical information. With data supplied by the bureau, they've already created an electronic map of the entire United States down to the census block.

Other companies that specialize in political data, such as Election Data Services of Washington, D.C., enhance these population programs with political data to provide powerful redistricting tools that can report vital statistics for any potential district with the point and click of a mouse. Election Data Services, for instance, is working on contract for the Illinois State Board of Elections, the Democratic legislative leadership and the city of Chicago, which must redraw local representational districts. Caliper Corp., meanwhile, is working for the Republican legislative leadership.

These software programs enable politicians to evaluate alternative plans quickly. They also give interest groups the chance to float their own alternative maps, and some are expected to do so.

In fact, good government reformers frequently advocate removing the unseemly political aspects of redistricting by letting computers do the job. Mapping programs with a "redistrict" button that automatically generates a map, they believe, will help their cause. But, while this idea might have appeal, computer programs are limited in what they can do. And they produce predictable results that can consistently favor one party over another.

Though technological advances over the past decade have enabled just about anyone to make sense of the immense amount of data involved in redistricting, there are limits as to what can be done. The Chicago piece of the puzzle, for example, can't be wedged next to the Cairo piece. Further, there are some good old-fashioned rules every mapmaker must follow. And they serve to complicate this process. 

To begin, the 1970 Illinois Constitution requires that political districts "shall be compact, contiguous and substantially equal in population." And the United States Supreme Court has held that, under certain circumstances, special districts containing a majority of minority ethnic persons must be created. The most challenging aspect of redistricting is that these goals can conflict with one another. Furthermore, because each redistricting plan is unique, each must be evaluated on the extent to which it accommodates these competing goals. 

Mapmakers must first heed the shape of districts. The state Constitution requires that all parts of each political district be contiguous, meaning they must be connected, and that each district must be compact. These requirements can be found in the state's 1870 Constitution, too. Indeed, the historical roots of this requirement extend back to pre-colonial England. The idea is that all parts of a district should share a common background and that an elected official must be able to visit the far-flung corners of his or her district easily.

Contiguity is a large word for a simple concept without controversy. There are a handful of noncontiguous districts in the United States, but these districts usually must traverse large bodies of water.

Compactness may be a more familiar word, but surprisingly there are many ways to define it. The area of a district, the location of population within the district, the length of the perimeter of the district and many other standards have been proposed to measure compactness.

In overturning the 1981 map for then-state Rep. Judith Koehler's 89th Illinois House district, the Illinois Supreme Court avoided choosing a standard by relying "on a visual examination of the questioned district... [which] reveals a tortured, extremely elongated form which is not compact in any sense." It's not hard to understand the court's determination that the district was not compact, as it stretched 125 miles in a north-south direction to the east of Peoria and was joined at the middle by a six-mile-wide strip.

Compactness seeks to protect against gerrymandering, the practice of drawing lines simply to advantage one political party over another. Gerrymandering is a pejorative term with insidious undemocratic connotations. Obvious gerrymanders are districts that meander across the landscape in pursuit of the right mix of voters - just enough supporters of the party drawing the lines to comfortably win the district.

Of course, mapmakers also can draw districts so that they pack in as many supporters of the opposite party as possible, thereby concentrating those voters and wasting their votes. Another tactic is to throw opposition incumbents together into a contorted district stretching between their homes. But gerrymandering can occur with compact districts, too. A compactness standard just makes gerrymandering more difficult, not impossible.

What will trouble mapmakers the most, though, is that each district must have substantially equal populations. Under a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s, instigated by Baker v. Carrin 1962, districts must be of equal population to uphold the constitutional principle of one person, one vote, a requirement also codified in the Illinois Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court sought to remedy unequal representation in states that had not redistricted in decades, thereby generating unbalanced representation between rural and rapidly growing urban and suburban areas. That was the case in Illinois, where, in the first half of the 20th century, a rural-dominated legislature didn't bother to redistrict, though the population was growing in the city of Chicago.

The courts now favor near population equality in all districts. However, small deviations are permitted if there are justifiable reasons, such as respecting existing political boundaries - counties or cities, say. For congressional districts, the U.S. Supreme Court has only permitted differences in population between the least and most populous districts of less than 1 percent. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed deviations as great as 10 percent for state legislative districts, the Illinois Supreme Court has favored, though not explicitly adopted, a 1 percent standard for those districts, too.

The courts' insistence on equal population means that districts must be redrawn when the new census numbers become available every decade. It also means that every district is going to have to undergo some change, a frightening prospect for any representative and a perplexity to voters who find themselves thrown into new districts. But even if a district's population miraculously changed in sync with the statewide population, districts on either side of that miraculous district would likely need to be adjusted, producing a ripple effect. 

In the extreme, the population of an area of the state may shrink so much that a district may be collapsed altogether. This situation will occur in congressional redistricting because Illinois' population growth did not keep pace with the rest of the country. The state was allotted one less seat in Congress during last December's reapportionment in Washington. But radical change may not be limited to congressional districts. Many anxious eyes will scrutinize census data when it becomes available to identify the pieces of the puzzle where population grew and those where it didn't grow as much or even declined. The area encompassed by downstate districts likely will grow larger to account for greater population increases in the counties surrounding Chicago.

But that's not the end of the game. A legislator faced with the prospect of a dramatically changed district, or worse, having to run against another incumbent, may be offered a sweetheart deal from the opposite party to forge a "bipartisan" map. Such deals could include a redrawn safe seat, or even an upgrade to a specially tailored congressional seat. However, with party power strongly concentrated in the legislative leadership, representatives who cross party lines on a matter as important as the map will undoubtedly face strong reprisals.

But mapmakers will face an even more difficult issue: how to account for race.

In certain circumstances, section two of the federal Voting Rights Act requires that special majority-minority districts be drawn, so called because their population is a majority of a minority ethnic group. Originally, majority-minority districts were necessary to prevent minority communities from being sliced into many districts, thereby diluting their votes and effectively preventing a minority candidate from winning election. Such districts have been required when certain conditions are met: when a minority population is large enough and compact enough to draw a district around, and where people of the majority group will not vote for candidates of the minority group.

Majority-minority districts tend toward tortured shapes, especially when minorities live in pocket communities that must be strung together to form the district. A classic example is the 4th Congressional District in Chicago, which connects two Latino communities in a thin "C" that wraps around the African-American community that forms the 7th Congressional District. Not surprising, the odd shape of the district provoked a lawsuit, which Illinois successfully defended by showing it satisfied the conditions for drawing majority-minority districts.

But in other lawsuits argued in the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court took a step back from tolerating the creation of majority-minority districts just because it's possible to do so. States must now have a justifiable reason beyond the simple desire to group together an ethnicity. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court set the minimum number of majority-minority districts at the current level. Thus, adding or subtracting majority-minority districts on a new map will not be easy.

All of these decisions must be made quickly. Next December, candidates must file for the 2002 primary. But the irony is that, while the two major parties will work hard to devise their solutions to this political puzzle, the winning maps likely will be chosen by chance. With divided control of the two legislative chambers, and with so much at stake, a compromise plan is unlikely.

Here's the process. The proposed maps will be contained in a legislative bill, which must become law by June 30. Because the legislature is scheduled to adjourn at the end of May, all legislative action on the map effectively will need to be completed by that date. It would be difficult to pull together the required extra-majority votes needed to pass such a bill after May 31. Further, the governor can take up to 60 days to sign or veto the bill. Then lawmakers will get a chance to agree or disagree with the governor. Thus, to meet the June 30 deadline, lawmakers have only until April 3 to draw the maps.

There's more - and here's where the element of chance enters, and why this could take awhile. If lawmakers and the governor fail to agree on the maps, an eight-member special commission will tackle redistricting beginning July 10. The commission is a political creature, as each of the four legislative leaders appoints one member of the General Assembly, and one nonmember. The commission will likely be deadlocked, as it was in 1981 and 1991. So, if a majority cannot agree to a plan by August 10, the Illinois Supreme Court suggests two people, one from each party, as potential commissioners. On September 5, the secretary of state will draw the name of one of those people to join the commission as a tie-breaker. Theoretically, an approved redistricting plan will be in place by October 5.

Political beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though. Those outraged by the maps will get their day in court. And, if the past is any guide, they may be successful at forcing some marginal changes, tweaking a district here or there. But on the whole, the maps are likely to remain intact for elections over the next decade - until we go through the whole process again in 2011.

Michael McDonald is on the faculty of the Illinois Legislative Studies Center at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He studies voting behavior and the political effects of redistricting, and was involved in the 1991 redistricting of California and the voting rights case Garza v. L.A. Board of Supervisors.

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