* The Change Illinois coalition looked at what happens in the first legislative election after a new district map is enacted into law…

Look at the number for competitive races, which are defined as losing candidates who received at least 45 percent of the vote.

And, really, it ain’t very “competitive” if somebody gets beat by nine points.

I’ve long said that the remapping process is broken. Most people agree. It has to be changed. This is unhealthy for a democracy. And, speaking frankly, it’s also not good for my business model. I need more races to cover, not fewer.

Other factors play into this, of course. Why didn’t the Republicans field and fund serious challengers to Lisa Madigan, Jesse White and all countywide Democrats in Cook? Because 1) it would be a waste of money, but more importantly 2) it would prompt those incumbents to spend big bucks on their reelection and that could hurt the Republicans. Same goes for legislative contests. Typically, the House Dems won’t unnecessarily back a sure-loser if it would hurt a Dem Senator, for example.

And there is no way that all, or even nearly all districts in this state can be drawn so they’re competitive. Parties are clustered. You can’t draw a GOP district on the South Side of Chicago, for instance. You can’t draw a Democratic district using McLean County as its base. If that could’ve been done, the Democrats woulda tried the last time around.

Overall, though, we have a very serious problem with how the maps are drawn.

* Democrats haven’t wanted to change the system because they benefited from it in 2011, when they had a Democratic governor. If Bruce Rauner wins two terms, however, they only have a 50-50 chance of controlling the map process (unless they can work out a compromise, which probably can’t happen).

The Democrats should look at another part of that chart - seats gained after a remap - and start thinking really hard about their party’s legislative future. They’re on top of the world now, and they may end up picking up even more seats in 2016, but their grip on power could be seriously diminished and possibly even gone with a Republican map drawn to be as partisan as the current one.

They would likely be better off with a neutral map. And so would Illinois.

…And so would I.

       

42 Comments - Anyone Remember - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:34 pm: State, yes. Congressional, not until the South / Indiana / et al do it at the same time. - Sir Reel - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:36 pm: I agree. And it’s not just an Illinois problem. It will be interesting to see what the US Supreme Court says about the Texas case before the court. - Wordslinger - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:39 pm: It’s not going to come from the GA. The Dems are on top, and I have no reason to believe the current GOP crew even wants the responsibility of governing. It will take a lot better grassroots movement than the flim-flam effort we saw this year. - Ducky LaMoore - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:44 pm: Absolutely hate the system. While the map heavily favors democrats, it also favors districts with huge republican domination. That way, the party gets to give the gift that keeps on giving to someone like, oh, Darin Lahood. A guy that could never achieve it on his own. He couldn’t win a primary if the seat was open. But now he will be filling that chair for 20 years without opposition. - unclesam - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:45 pm: This is, no doubt, the most important reform measure that needs to be done; however, the severe lack of “legislative will” in Illinois continues to impede any hope for progress. - Dirty Red - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:49 pm: First you agree with the IPI and now you’re talking about changing public policy so its better for your business. Kristina, we know it’s you. Give Rich his blog back now. - in the know - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:50 pm: a FAR more important reform (though perhaps less popular) then say, term limits. - Joe Blow - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:51 pm: First they need to implement term limits. - Dirty Red - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:51 pm: In all seriousness, I agree with you, Rich. The process of elected officials picking their constituents instead of it being the other way around is just wrong. - Team Sleep - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:52 pm: Sir - that is a great point, and that is a decision that will make a lot of states sweat. This isn’t just an Illinois a problem. As a Republican who pays attention to national politics as closely as Illinois politics, I can readily admit that there are a number of Republican-dominated states who gerrymandered their legislative and Congressional districts. Perhaps the better question would be to ask if there is Congressman or Senator who would be willing to introduce federal legislation to stop it nationally. - Bill White - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:53 pm: Yes, fair maps are a good idea. But before we trash Illinois too vigorously we should look at nearby states. As I recall, in 2012 in WI, less than 50% of the aggregate vote was turned into a 60% majority of seats by the WI GOP. In any event, multi-member districts are a good way to minimize the consequences of gerrymandering. Repeal the cut back amendment? - Del Clinkton - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:53 pm: It is time to Amend the Constitution of the United States of America to do the following: - insert a Right to Vote - Overturn Citizens United and public financing of election campaigns - End Gerry Mandering and get rid of these electoral districts. Perhaps use the US Geological Survey (isnt that the one with the County Maps?) - anon - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:53 pm: As far as the threat of Republicans controlling the remap, the last time they did that in 1991 they couldn’t use it to win control of the House for more than two years. Illinois has gotten much more Democratic since then, and will be even moreso by 2022. Consequently, I doubt the GOP could take the House even with a map they gerrymander. Another factor leading to more uncontested races is the law passed about four years ago to required candidates appointed to the ballot to fill a vacancy after the primary to collect signatures on petitions, though with less time to do it. This discourages people who might be willing to be sacrificial lambs, but not if they have to collect 1,000+ signatures and go through the inevitable petition challenge. In other words, the law is serving its intended purpose, namely giving more incumbents a total pass in the general. - Night moves - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:54 pm: I agree with everything you said, Rich. At the same time, the gerrymandering problem is even more pronounced in states like North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania because of Republicans who drew the maps. It’d be hard for me to go along with Illinois drawing a more independent map, while these states systematically disenfranchise millions of voters and don’t look as if they’re eager to change things. I know the focus is on Illinois here, but we’re one of the only states left that isn’t dominated by Republican legislatures. - Pot calling kettle - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:54 pm: I agree. GIS has made it much too easy to cut these districts. It would also be interesting to cut back the cut-back. - Ray del Camino - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 2:57 pm: The “Fair Map” people need to give it another try, and this time hire professionals to get the signatures. - A guy... - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:00 pm: The people will keep demanding this until they are heard. No question why there was such a fight to keep this off the ballot. I suspect it would have done even better than minimum wage. It should be repaired in a non-partisan way as soon as possible. - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:09 pm: ===and will be even moreso by 2022. === One never knows what could happen, especially if Rauner turns out to be a popular governor. - Ghost - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:13 pm: Ian for reform here, how do you do it? Term limits makes no sense, we have election limits, we call it voters. Term limits are just a snowy way of calling voters to stupid to elect good candidates. Besides term limits put all the political experience into the hands of special interest groups, and subjects inexperienced politicians to their mercy. What abhorrie idea demanding inexperience. - Rockford's Finest - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:14 pm: I think a federal statute is the best way to address this, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. Both parties do this when they control state legislatures, but man it’s nice to have a blue GA in a time when more and more are turning red. - Bourbonrich - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:15 pm: With the geographic size and then the concentration of population on the edges and then trying for small and contiguous without impacting voter rights, even a computer driven map may be even more oddly shaped than the one we have now. - Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:17 pm: ===Other factors play into this, of course. Why didn’t the Republicans field and fund serious challengers to Lisa Madigan, Jesse White and all countywide Democrats in Cook? Because 1) it would be a waste of money, but more importantly 2) it would prompt those incumbents to spend big bucks on their reelection and that could hurt the Republicans. Same goes for legislative contests. Typically, the House Dems won’t unnecessarily back a sure-loser if it would hurt a Dem Senator, for example.=== Mitigating factors beyond the map weigh in heavy to the competitiveness of races, and decisions to make car “race” a race. You can’t give up so much of the checker board and expect kings to magically be made. I take nothing away from the map relevance or the discussion, but if the Caucuses and the state organization don’t want to play in so many glaring instances, convincing me the map solves the ills, I’m hard pressed to believe that. MJM won against a GOP map. If the want and desire are there… And when districts vote at an 80% clip turnout and vote according as they are “drawn”, then you have my attention more. A 52% turnout in give-up races, you aren’t convincing much. - anon - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:20 pm: == will be even moreso by 2022 == The population of Illinois gets more Latino and less white each day. In eight more years, those collar counties will be voting like suburban Cook. Unless the national GOP gets its act together, non-whites will continue to find the GOP less than hospitable. Which means the Land of Lincoln will get darker blue. - anon - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:24 pm: == One never knows what could happen, especially if Rauner turns out to be a popular governor. == If Rauner keeps his pledge to serve no more than two terms, then he wouldn’t be on the ballot for governor in 2022. Of course he could run for something else if a Democratic US Senate seat were up that year, or he could simply pull a Shimkus and decide his term-limit pledge was no longer binding. - G. Hutton - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:28 pm: Oh Rich, Rauner will be a vast improvement from what we’ve had. Stay positive Rich! Good things will follow. - Team Sleep - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:37 pm: Anon - yeah, but even if he keeps his two term pledge he would still be governor during the next remap process (which would take place in May 2021, a few months before petitions for governor would begin to be passed around). Even with the last two tiebreaker situations taking a while to resolve, that gives Governor Rauner plenty of time to have a voice in the remap process (assuming he wins a second term). - Illini - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:45 pm: and so would I. Redistricting is a joke. I attended at public hearing at SIUC prior to the last redistricting - 99% of the recommendations were not implemented. I am a Southern Illinois activist Democrat and I can honestly say that our new map did not do any favors for many of us. Shimkus still has an easily winnable district, Enyart was put in a marginal district ( and he lost this last election by a wide margin ), and Davis ended up in a district that proved to be more R than D even though it was supposed to be a swing district. Gerrymandering is rampant throughout the state and the politicians in charge of the process are playing us like fools. I do not like it. Yet our downstate D’s ( Bradley, Phelps, Forby and a few more ) are in relatively “safe” districts that will enable them to retain their seniority and some influence in future sessions. And, in addition, as the current map is drawn, I will NEVER have Democrat represent me, either in Springfield or in D.C. I only have my fellow Dems to thank for this disgraceful ignorance and contempt for Southern Illinois. Yet I appreciate the fact that the D’s are still in the majority - yet most of them know nothing about Illinois South of I-80, and that is disgraceful. Check out the Brennan Center website for more info on redistricting. The Illinois model is broken and must be fixed - but that is something that only happens once every 10 years! - sal-says - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:48 pm: == I’ve long said that the remapping process is broken. Most people agree. == Broken? I guess I’d say most of the entire political process in this State & the country is broken. . Money pretty much controls elections. . Money pretty much controls elected officials. . A corporation is a ‘person’. . The ‘art’ of compromise is a long gone concept in politics. . By the people, for the people seems long gone. - Stones - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:52 pm: Thanks to PQ we don’t have cumulative voting anymore. He touts this as a success. I contend it was one of the worst moves Illinois ever made. JMHO - Upon Further Review - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 3:58 pm: Madigan knows his maps. He dominates when drawing districts. Compare this to Lee Daniels who managed to hold the majority for only two years under a Republican map. Daniels would not press the advantage like Madigan. At the same time, Pate Philip was Senate President for a decade. The truly bizarre 4th Congressional District was a GOP gift to Luis Gutiérrez. - Jake From Elwood - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:08 pm: Is there a path to make this happen? It would take compromise and it seems to me that legislators do not like to compromise on the boundaries of their legislative districts. Probably a pipedream, sorry Rich. - jake - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:10 pm: Rich, I agree with you totally. The only arguments against this are partisan, and those arguments are only based on the short term interests of the currently dominant party. - Hacksaw Jim - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:19 pm: Why not just make elections non-partisan? That would go a lot further than changing the map or imposing term limits. - A guy... - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:45 pm: Hack, you must have just walked out of the dispensary. It wouldn’t make any difference if the candidates were still partisan and the map was manipulated. Have another brownie man. - modest proposal - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:56 pm: IMHO fair maps will keep the crazies out of office. It will force representatives to the center. When they act too far to the left/right this will allow another candidate to overtake them. I think this is a good thing, and this will prevent people from representing their primary electorate instead of their district. However, how do we do it. Do we switch to an independent committee to draw the maps, the fair map like iowa, or another solution. - lake county democrat - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 4:59 pm: –I’ve long said that the remapping process is broken. Most people agree. It has to be changed. This is unhealthy for a democracy.– If only the political media would act in accordance with their beliefs- the only media outlet that consistently pressed the governor and legislators who could have put gerrymandering reform on the ballot was the much despised Tribune. Goodness knows how many of the regulars here mock reformers (and I’m not just talking about the Yes for independent maps project). You would think on a political board the one unifying principle would be the sanctity of “one man, one vote.” You’d think wrong. - Hacksaw Jim - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 5:06 pm: === Hack, you must have just walked out of the dispensary. It wouldn’t make any difference if the candidates were still partisan and the map was manipulated. Have another brownie man. === Guy, How exactly will candidates be “partisan” if they continue to have non-partisan elections? Im not saying that they won’t be defined in some other way, such as by ideology, but partisanship? I don’t think so. I think you like partisanship. You just wish that there were more people in office that were affiliated with your political party. - D.P.Gumby - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 5:44 pm: Current law is that political gerrymandering is not unconstitutional; racial is. But, given the very fine line between them, I think that there is little difference and the current case just argued before the U.S. Supremes may result in all gerrymandering being held a constitutional violation. That is the only way to get rid of this and into neutral redistricting. - the Other Anonymous - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 6:27 pm: There is another redistricting scenario: Democrats keep veto-proof majorities in both chambers, leaving a second-term Governor Rauner out of the process. - Illini - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 7:11 pm: I agree the Iowa plan is an exemplary model, but unfortunately our Illinois politicos will never even consider any such radical changes in the process. They will lose control. And in the eventual process would inevitably make the local races much more competitively. Again, check the Brennan Center website. - walker - Wednesday, Nov 12, 14 @ 10:20 pm: There is a legal route to get this remapping reform done via petition, building on the work from this year with a better effort. They need better funding and organizational support. This is in no way the disaster from the start that Rauner’s Term Limits effort was. The two should not be confused. Even if passed, it is not the silver bullet that many dreamers consider it. Most districts would still be non-competitive in Illinois due to the geographic dispersal of political views. Even with a “neutral” map, the legislature would still have been Dem-controlled, at least in the past three elections. It will change some key internal dynamics in party leadership. All in, some moderate positive effects, that make it worth doing. The best will be that it gets removed as an excuse for problems really caused by other issues. - A guy - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 6:39 am: Hack, of course I wish more people from my party were in office and I work toward that end. Your solution is non-partisan elections. Chicago has them and will have another in a few months. My guess is that “independent and non partisan” Rahm Emanuel will win. Starting to get the picture? Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.