Redistricting

Redistricting was several weeks ago, which makes this a strange article to appear now:

Council members Gina Jackson, Dist. 1; Marci Dodds, Dist. 4; and Ken Pirok, Dist. 5, all voted against the plan. At-Large Council member Thomas Bruno was not present for a vote.

"I voted against it because I didn't think we needed to be making wholesale changes to people's districts," said Pirok, who has the largest district with more than 19,000 residents.

"Instead of taking off a part of my district, (McIntosh) took off a lot, and added a lot that wasn't there before."

Dodds had thought some of the other maps presented to the Council made more sense.

"I thought (the new map) was illogical," Dodds said. "I didn't think it was the best map presented to us. It changed two of the districts more than they needed to be."

Dodds also said she felt some partisanship played a part in creating this map.

"I feel very strongly that we need to have a strong centered district in order to have a strong local government," she said. "Now, Dist. 4 has been pushed to be more Democratic. They used to be able to vote both Democrats and Republicans into office."

Discuss.

From today's News-Gazette:

City council members are elected on a nonpartisan basis, though the party affiliation of most council members is generally well known.

"If it's partisan, districts 1, 2 and 4 are Democratic, but that didn't have anything to do with it," McIntosh said.

The new districts are bigger and most of them moved to the west, he said.

Voting against the map were Marci Dodds, who represents District 4, Gina Jackson of District 1, and Ken Pirok, who represents District 5. All are Democrats.

Dodds read a statement saying she wanted a map with "a minimum of change, logically done, since we will probably be doing this again in four years with the regular census." She also said she wanted a map that "kept the council as nonpartisan as possible."

After the meeting, she said she thought her central Champaign district had been changed from a centrist district to one that leaned more heavily Democratic. She said she thought the other districts had also been made more Democratic or Republican than before.

"The thing about District 4 is it's always been the center of the city," she said. "There's Democrats and Republicans. It's always been very balanced. I feel very strongly you have to have a strong middle to have good city government."

Jackson said she was concerned that the neighborhood around Franklin Middle School, which formerly had been split between districts 1 and 3, is now a part of District 4. "I believe we probably could have picked a better solution," she said.

Pirok said he thought McIntosh "railroaded" the map through without sufficient input from council members.

Pirok said his district added territory to the east from Dodd's old district, which was unusual because most districts were growing to the west. Dodds also objected to losing the territory to District 5.

Discuss.

From the Daily Illini - I don't think I saw any NG stories on the results of Champaign's redistricting.

The chosen plan has about 15,000 people in each district, and was drawn by Vic McIntosh, District 3. He said the old map had many split districts, and he wanted to fix that this time around.

"I tried to draw it so there were no big changes," McIntosh said. "With the new plan, only one precinct remains split."

All but two of the Council members voted for McIntosh's map during last week's study session. The two others, Marci Dodds of District 4 and Gina Jackson of District 1, voted for another map.

Dodds said she chose the other map because she believes partisanship played a part in the drawing of the chosen one.

"Map 1 (the map chosen) is a much more partisan map," Dodds said.

The Champaign City Council will discuss redistricting at their study session tonight.

UPDATE:  Deb Feinen has some more information here.  Evidently there are 12 different proposed maps to discuss.

From the City of Champaign:

Because of recent growth, the City’s population is not evenly distributed over the five council districts. In order to evenly distribute the population, the district boundaries must be redrawn. Your input is essential to this process.

Visit the 2008 Council Redistricting page for more information and to draw new districts as you see fit.

The deadline for submittal is January 31, 2008.

For more information, please contact:
Lacey Rains, Planner II
(217) 403-8800
lacey.rains@ci.champaign.il.us

Very cool.

The NG really doesn't like gerrymandering the County Board districts.

The lesson here? Champaign County voters are ticket-splitters: independent-minded and open to electing who they perceive is the best candidate for the job, whether that candidate is a Republican, a Democrat, a man, a woman, black or white, incumbent or a challenger.

...

That's because the county board's Democratic majority drew district maps that stuffed as many Republican voters as possible into four districts so that the other five would favor Democrats. And let's be clear; Republicans did the same kind of flagrant gerrymandering during the many decades they controlled the county board. So both parties are to blame.

...

Voters should hold candidates' feet to the fire and demand that the next time county board districts are drawn it be done with a computer program that not only guarantees compact and contiguous districts with equal representation but also that districts be competitive. That way, we'll attract more and better candidates and all voters will have a choice – not just the Democrats in overwhelmingly Democratic County Board District 6 where there are five candidates of their party for two seats, but no Green or Republican Party hopefuls.

Meh.

Elections have consequences - the Democrats won the Board majority in 2000, so they got to draw the map.  If they hold the majority in 2010, they'll get to draw it again. 

If the GOP wants to win the Board, they'll need to win at least two seats in a Democratic district before 2011.  At least three of the "Democratic" districts (6, 7 and 9) are competitive enough that the GOP could win them with the right candidate, message and effort.  Doing so is not impossible, especially in a County of "ticket-splitters," as the NG describes Champaign County.

UPDATE:  Link was missing before.  Sorry!

In the wake of a special census and annexations, the City of Champaign will be drawing a new ward map for use in the 2009 election.

The city attorney's office advised that a redistricting is warranted due to the constitutional requirement of "one person, one vote." That principle can be violated if comparable districts differ in population by 10 percent or more, U.S. Supreme Court decisions have held.

When the council last redistricted in 2002, the five districts ranged in population from 13,200 in District 1 to 13,768 in District 5, a maximum variance of 4.2 percent.

But those numbers have been thrown out of whack by the population increases, said council member Vic McIntosh.

McIntosh said District 5, represented by Ken Pirok, has added an estimated 2,834 residents, while McIntosh's District 3 has added 1,612 residents. District 1 represented by Gina Jackson has added 949 residents.

This looks really cool:

And with redistricting software making drawing maps a much easier process, the council has opted to forgo hiring an outside consultant. Council members who are interested will end up drawing their own maps, with the help of city planning staff, if needed.

The public will be able to submit maps for consideration as well, with the city intending to provide helpful information and tools on the city's Web site, www.ci.champaign.il.us.

We'll try to link to those tools as they're made available.

This is an interesting post, as it speculates that Illinois will lose another Congressional district after the 2012 Census.

After the 2000 Census, Illinois dropped from 20 to 19 Congressional districts, and Rep. David Phelps, a Democrat from the southern tip of Illinois, got the shaft, as his district was carved up between three different Congressional districts (the ones represented by Reps. Costello, Shimkus and our own Tim Johnson). 

In Illinois, in 2002, immediately after redistricting, there was only one competitive Congressional District. It was the 19th in southern and central Illinois, where two incumbents, Representative John Shimkus and Representative David Phelps, were thrown together in a consolidated district. It was a district which by mutual agreement between the leaders of the congressional delegation of the two parties, favored the Republicans and Shimkus won handily, as expected.

According to most of the stories I've heard, Phelps was singled out because, among the other members of the Illinois delegation, he was the least "collegial."  The other incumbents basically kicked out the "unpopular" kid, agreeing to map that protected themselves by giving most of Phelps' old district to Costello (12th District) and Shimkus (19th District), but which put Phelps' residence into Johnson's 15th district. 

The new 15th District, for instance, covers a wide swath of central Illinois’ rich farmland, from Livingston County south through U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson’s home base in Urbana. It then hugs the eastern border of the state, hooking south just enough to capture U.S. Rep. David Phelp’s home in Eldorado at the northeast corner of Saline County...

Known throughout the vast rural stretches of his southern Illinois congressional district as a gospel performer, Phelps was singing a different tune last May. As negotiators struck a rare bipartisan deal on new district boundary lines, the socially conservative Democrat from a mining enclave at the edge of Saline County discovered the blues: He’d been chosen as the sacrificial lamb in the plan to cut the size of the delegation.

“The goal was to create districts that no one would have to lose,” says GOP remap point man Mike Stokke, a top aide to Hastert.

Phelps ran in 2002 against Shimkus and lost, and now works in the Blagojevich administration.

I assume that in 2012, the incumbent Congressmen of both parties will again come to some sort of agreement to protect themselves at the expense of one of their own.  If there's an open seat due to retirement in 2012, it will be fairly painless to eliminate that district.  But if not, I wonder which member/district will get the shaft.

There's going to be a regularly scheduled statewide referendum in 2008 on whether to hold a state Constitutional Convention.  Dan Johnson-Weinberger opens the discussion about a "con-con" today on Illinoize.

I think there is something pathetic about opposition to a constitutional convention -- pathetic in the sense that the opposition to a constitutional convention is really opposition to a public debate about changes to our constitution that must be ratified by the electorate. That's it. It's fear of democracy, ultimately.

We should have a constitutional debate about the state shouldering the primary responsibility for funding schools -- and what efficiency measures the school districts and teachers unions should have to trade as part of better public policy. It's a good debate to have in the General Assembly and a good debate to have at a constitutional convention.

There's actually a yahoogroup for advocates of a constitutional convention here that anyone can join.

I hope Illinois voters (and the powers that be) support a constitutional convention in 2008. There are always improvements that we can make, and a debate on the issues followed by a public vote (and constrained by the protections of the federal Constitution) would be a very healthy thing.

Dan names a bunch of his pet issues that he'd like to see addressed. 

I'd be mostly in favor of structural reforms to the political system: redistricting reform, eliminate the power monopoly that legislative leaders have, greater protections for political speech, better disclosure (without limits) of campaign contributions.

What would you support or like to see addressed? 

The Champaign County Board is moving closer to a final draft of a comprehensive zoning ordinance re-write:

More than a year after Champaign County residents first reviewed zoning ordinance changes proposed for rural districts, the county appears to be inching closer to presenting another draft to the public.

At 7 p.m. Nov. 2, the Champaign County Board's Environment and Land Use Committee will hold a study session to review the most recent draft and direct staff on whether or not to release it to the public for review. Then, at the group's regular Nov. 14 meeting, they could vote on the draft's release.

After that, public hearings will be held (possibly in January) and eventually the county board will vote on the new zoning amendments. That may be in March.

"It's a fascinating and complicated process, but I believe staff and members of the Environment and Land Use Committee are trying to create a zoning ordinance that's updated, modern and represents the will of the county," said committee co-chair Nancy Greenwalt of Champaign.

It's been a long time coming. For years, county board members and staff have been working on rewriting zoning for the county's agricultural districts (generally areas 1.5 miles beyond a municipality's border).

"It came down to a crisis a few months ago when we started getting planning commissions for townships and municipalities involved. They were filing protests on various proposed changes and state law provides if a township or municipality files a complaint, then it requires three-quarters of the members of (county) board to pass that over their objection," said Ralph Langenheim of Urbana, chair of the Environment and Land Use Committee.

This is an interesting consequence of the redistricting map drawn by County Board Democrats after the 2000 census.  The Democrats, with 15 of the 27 members, control the Board.  And 14 of the 15 Democrat members live within the city limits of Champaign and Urbana.  The new zoning ordinances, however, will only affect areas more than 1.5 miles outside of city limits.  So the 14 Champaign-Urbana Democratic County Board members can, conceivably, pass this a new zoning ordinance that will restrict the property rights of County residents living only in rural Champaign - and it's an ordinance to which the Democratic members themselves will never be subject.

Great news from the Land of Schwarzenegger, where polling indicates that, with three weeks remaining before election day, four important ballot initiatives look likely to pass.  I'm particularly interested in (and supportive of) the redistricting initiative.

(Hat tip: Ace of Trump)

UPDATE:  This article, though, paints a completely different picture:  "The efforts to redraw legislative districts and cap state spending are running well behind, and the teacher tenure initiative has yet to gain majority support. The measure requiring unions to get their members' permission before dues could be used for political purposes appears to have the strongest support, even gaining favor among many rank-and-file union members."

Governor Schwarzenegger's ballot initiative to enact non-partisan re-districting of California's legislative and Congressional districts is up 23 points roughly month before the election.

Amen. 

With initiatives to reform redistricting expected to make the 2005 ballot in California and Ohio, and another for 2006 gaining traction in Florida, the ultimate insider issue has suddenly become hot in three of the nation’s most populous states.

Now we need some changes in Illinois, but that'll never happen.

I realize that I'm probably the only one who cares about the California redistricting proposal being pushed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and fought by just about every special interest in California, but it unfortunately appears to be doing quite badly:

See here. The measure, Prop. 77, has 32% in favor, 46% opposed, and 22% undecided.

It's unfortunate not because I think the measure could result in more seats for Republicans (which it might, or might not) but because the rules by which we select our elected representatives really do matter.  The "safer" a legislator is, the less the views of their constituents matter. Having many seats that are competitive between both parties is the ideal scenario, as then ideas and legislation and personalities are vigorously debated every single election, and legislators must constantly work to listen to and even abide by the wishes of the governed. 

Such a notion is anathema to many special interest groups who depend on state government and excessive taxes for their livelihoods, through programs like bloated school bureacracies and unnecessary corporate welfare.  Changing the way district lines are drawn could have begun to address some of the structural problems that California has.