Democratic Party map-makers in Springfield have crafted new legislative district lines that are so laughably offensive to the Illinois Constitution that the State Supreme Court either will have to reject them outright, or, confirm the Court’s reputation for partisan political corruptness. You decide this one for yourselves, readers.
The State charter is crystal clear: “Legislative Districts shall be compact, contiguous and substantially equal in population. Representative districts shall be compact, contiguous, and substantially equal in population.”
Clear enough?
Merriam-Webster defines compactness as “closely and neatly packed together; dense.” A circle is perfectly compact. A box is compact.
Nearby, see the proposed Illinois House districts for northeastern Illinois. Many are the opposite of compact. Look how they wriggle out from Chicago’s city center, like skinny, arthritic, fingers, clawing their way outward to find enough votes to provide districts for incumbent Democrats.
Think of the voters in these anti-compact districts. How in the world would they ever know which district they were in, who represented them, and of whom to contact when they might have a problem with Illinois government?
Obviously, the Democratic Party map-makers are, to use an old saw, selecting their voters, rather than letting voters select their representatives.
We wouldn’t be facing such atrocious maps if the State high court had allowed on the ballot in 2016 a proposal to allow voters to determine if they wanted an independent commission to draw maps, without partisan gerrymandering. But the Court, in an opinion of four Democrats in the majority and three Republicans in the minority, blocked this opportunity, with probably the most contrived bit of jurisprudence since the Dred Scott decision, which prompted the Civil War.
Nor, can the Illinois Supreme Court hide behind earlier decisions. Indeed, this court in 1989 declared a State legislative district invalid because it offended the compact requirement of our State charter, and forced a redrawing. The districts proposed in the map are as bad as that invalid district.
A map of Chicago’s neighborhoods are generally compact, which you would expect. I am sure that is what delegates to the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention had in mind.
Now, because of requirements that districts be equal in population, valid districts can’t, of course, always be perfect squares. But, come on, the proposed, tortured, district maps are the height of political arrogance. Democratic Party leaders obviously assume that the State high court again will play its partisan hand, which it did five years ago.
Democratic Party leaders in Springfield have overplayed this situation badly. Mike Madigan would not have been so brazen.
Jim Nowlan is a former state House member, senior aide to three unindicted Illinois governors, and former chair of the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission.