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“Fair Map” coalition coming up short

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Illinois

* The Fair Map Coalition originally thought it could gather 288,000 valid petition signatures by April 1st. That didn’t happen, so it extended the deadline until last Friday, April 16th. But that deadline has been missed as well…

A coalition wanting to change how the state draws its legislative districts lacks the signatures needed to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot but is pressing ahead.

Jan Czarnik with the Fair Map Coalition said [Friday] that based on the “volume” of petitions filed so far, they don’t have the required 288,000 signatures to get the item on the ballot.

The coalition chose [Friday] as its self-imposed deadline to receive petitions after extending the deadline from April 1. The official deadline to submit petitions for the ballot to the secretary of state’s office is May 3.

“It’s only mid-April,” she said of the deadline. “There are two weeks left.”

But they remain optimistic…

Jan Czarnik, executive director of the Illinois League of Women Voters, which is spearheading the petition drive, said support for the petitions has been strong.

But, Czarnik said, “We don’t have the 300,000 signatures yet.”

Some Republicans planned to spend the coming days ramping up their collection of signatures. Czarnik said some churches plan to become active in the signature process thisweekend.

More…

[Mary Schaafsma, issues and advocacy coordinator with the League of Women Voters] said the group expects petitions from a wide variety of organizations to come in this week. “We’ll have a better count then,” she said. “I think at the end of the week, or early the following week, we’ll have a good idea of where we are.”

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column is about the remap process…

Almost nothing frightens state legislators more than redistricting. The drawing of new legislative district maps after every census causes more bouts of heartburn than just about anything else.

Take a look at the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when several state Senators flocked to a secure computer room to check on their district boundaries just ahead of a critical map-making deadline. The rest of us were still in shock, but those Senators were taking care of business. Their business.

The ultimate goal in redistricting for legislators is not only to get a map that allows them to remain in their current homes and discourage competition from the other political party, but also to draw a district that eliminates primary opponents and includes their strongest precincts and closest allies.

It doesn’t always work out that way. Former Democratic state Rep. Judy Erwin was a highly respected legislator, but the last remap - controlled by her party - put her in the untenable position of running against colleagues and/or running in a lot of unfamiliar turf. She chose retirement. She wasn’t alone.

Legislative leaders look at the map-making process a different way. They please whom they can (or want) and do everything possible to draw maps that guarantee their party’s dominance. This, of course, is much easier for Democrats in Illinois than Republicans because the state has leaned Democratic for so many years. Even though the Republicans drew the map in 1991, the House Democrats controlled the chamber for eight out of 10 years. And the Senate Democrats came within several hundred votes of winning their chamber in 1996.

The Democrats won the right to draw the current map in the 2001 lottery. Since then, their party has dominated legislative elections, mainly because the party has done so well statewide.

Besides completely turning around their party’s fortunes and tweaking some of the more evenly divided districts, the best way legislative Republicans can get back into the game is to trap the Democrats in Chicago as much as possible and keep them from splitting up suburban Cook County towns and strategic Downstate communities into tiny pieces.

The Democrats have successfully used “spoking” to extend their Chicago districts into the Cook County suburbs. Spoking simultaneously dilutes suburban Republican votes and adds to the number of city-centric Democrats who can be elected. Trap the Democrats in Chicago and make sure suburban and Downstate towns are kept whole, and the Republicans might possibly be able to draw maps that give them a halfway decent shot at winning their chambers.

That’s a big reason the Democrats are turning thumbs down on a remap proposal by the Republicans and good government groups such as the League of Women Voters. The “Fair Map Amendment” would all but prohibit mapmakers from crossing municipal boundaries. It’s a GOP dream come true, the Dems say, and the good government types fell for it.

The “Fair Map” authors also have steadfastly denied Democratic accusations that their proposed constitutional amendment would dilute minority rights. But during a state Senate committee hearing last week, the proponents admitted they were working on changing their legislative proposal to satisfy groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund which had objected to the measure.

The “Fair Map” group also is trying to gather signatures to put the proposal on the ballot this fall, and it’s far too late to change the wording on that initiative’s race and ethnic provisions. Last week’s all but admission that their language falls short of protecting minority rights could be used against their petition effort as the submission deadline draws near.

The Senate Democrats passed their own alternative last week, and it has its flaws as well. Far too often, district maps are drawn to allow legislators to choose their voters, rather than the other way around. The Senate Democratic proposal doesn’t really do anything to address this very real problem.

In the end, though, all this may be for naught. The reformers and the Republicans haven’t been able to convince the Democrats to adopt their plan, and the word is that their petition-gathering operation isn’t up to snuff. The House Democrats are one vote shy of a three-fifths majority required to pass constitutional amendments, so it’s unlikely that they could pass the Senate-approved measure even if they wanted to. What we have here is probably an empty debating exercise with no real future.

* Related…

* Nancy Marcus: Stop the politicians; support Fair Map Amendment

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 8:30 am

Comments

There are two things about this that drive me nuts.

1) Someone has to draw the map - do you want it to be people you have elected to pass laws or do you want it to be someone completely unaccountable to the people who is selected by the leaders? Either way politics is still part of the process. The only way to ensure that politics is completely out of the process is to move to a computer generated system, but there’s almost no way Illinois could do that and comply with the necessary federal laws. Those who say Iowa does it fail to recognize that Iowa’s population covered by the Voting Rights Act is close to nothing.

2) These people aren’t guaranteed their seats - They still have to run in primaries and they still have to win a general election. Yes, most incumbents are retained, but that’s not 100% due to the map. If no one runs against them in the primary and no one runs against them in the general, well, they’re gonna win.

Comment by hummm Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:02 am
Rich-While I agree with your analysis of the remap process in large part. There are some over-generalizations, too. The Dems picked up seats with the last map in the suburbs & downstate because they kept whole communities, such as Waukegan, Aurora and Champaign-Urbana, together. They also largely solidified a Dem seat in Decatur and tried to keep the majority of Springfield together. I’m sure there are examples supporting your thesis, but it goes both ways.

Comment by Rubbernecker Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:11 am
I get around quite a bit in the Loop and on the trains, and I haven’t seen anyone collecting signatures.

Comment by wordslinger Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:27 am
@hummm - I don’t understand the details, but to answer your question, if legislative leaders are against the Fair Map effort, I suspect Fair Map is more fair than Their Map. But there should be a way to have a computer do this, subject to the Voting Rights constraints.

by the way, I wonder what does Governor Quinn have to say about Fair Map? Sheila Simon is listed as a partner of the Fair Map effort at http://www.ilfairmap.com/

Comment by Robert Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:27 am
Fair Map is not “structural and procedural” so it’d never survive getting on the ballot. I suspect that is why so many people don’t support it.

As far as computers drawing the maps… they use computers now. Do you really think Mike Madigan is going to sit in a map room somewhere with a pencil?

Its a question of who writes the program based on what criteria and how to make sure the resulting maps live within Title II of the Voting Rights Act.

Comment by John Bambenek Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:30 am
Wordslinger, gathering signatures is frowned upon in the kingdom of Richie/Madigan and Cullerton!

Comment by Hank Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:32 am
The Dems plan calls for respecting municipal boundaries too.

Comment by Anon Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:34 am
**Fair Map is not “structural and procedural” so it’d never survive getting on the ballot. I suspect that is why so many people don’t support it.**

Haha… you think that more than, say, 10 people actually know about the “structural and procedural” issue?

Comment by dave Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:40 am
Fair Map is not fair to minorities. That name is deceiving to voters. Eight member commission is also not large enough to represent the diversity of Illinois.

Comment by Suburban voter Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:49 am
==Its a question of who writes the program based on what criteria and how to make sure the resulting maps live within Title II of the Voting Rights Act.==

The parameters of map-making could be set to follow some logical rules, such as following municipal boundaries whenever possible. Those boundaries could then be placed in a hierarchy that would keep wards, precincts, townships, cities, and counties together as best as possible. You could also set compactness and Voting Rights Act requirements as additional parameters.

It’s a laudable goal. This would save money (and prevent confusion) in polling places if everyone shared the same ballot. It would make the jobs of the reps easier because they could focus their attention better in a compact district that didn’t give them slices of dozens of local jurisdictions. On the down side, they could be more parochial than they already are.

It would be nice if they could agree upon a set of ground rules for map drawing without a constitutional mandate, but the temptation to pick a district seems to be too much.

Comment by Pot calling kettle Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:54 am
Can someone tell me where I can go to sign the petition in the city of Springfield?

Comment by Segatari Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 9:54 am
The coalition pushing the Fair Map amendment gathered sigs in a way I became exceedingly skeptical they were even going to get 1/5 the minimum.

It just seems like I would have been asked to sign multiple times. I would have been asked to circulate. They would have built alliances with independent and minor party candidates to have circulators pass both petitions. They would have hired staff.

In short, they would have taken the project seriously.

Instead, the coalition pushing the Fair Map Amendment is using their campaign–a campaign lacking serious organizing–to bash Illinois Democrats.

I like the League of Women Voters, but I think they go used on this Fair Map Amendment thing.

Comment by Carl Nyberg Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 10:07 am
1. The one and only reason that the Republicans and the Chicago Tribune are fueling the “fair map” fight is because they want to see more Republicans elected. They couldn’t win on a GOP-drawn map, they couldn’t win on a Dem-drawn map, but they hope they can win on a map drawn by a bunch of commissioners.

2. Their argument is based on the faulty idea that Democrats and Republicans should have an equal chance to win most districts. That might be true if Democrats and Republicans have equally good ideas, but that’s not the case. Whether you like some, all or none of the Democrats ideas, Republicans have offered NO real solutions to the current budget crisis.

3. Their proposal squeezes out the influence of both conservative Republicans and “Reformocrats”, and virtually eliminates any hope of outside challengers to the two-party system. There’s a reason that Green Party candidates only run in lopsided Democratic districts and conservative Republicans only run in lopsided GOP districts. Both will become endangered species under this proposal.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 10:12 am
Dave-

Oh, it’s probably about 10. Unfortunately for them, it’s the 10 people who could dump serious coin into, say, a petition effort to get an amendment on the ballot. Neither they or I raised any real money.

Pot Calling Kettle-

I didn’t say it was impossible, it’s just not easy… but again, it isn’t simply using a computer, it’s who is writing the program, who is reviewing it before its used and who can make tweaks to the maps it produces. You give me a computer and the data, I could draw out of office every Democrat (or at least making a bunch of high-end realtors very very happy) in the state and still “respect” municipal boundaries.

I’d rather have the ground rules in the constitution… that’s the only effectice place to constrain the legislature.

Comment by John Bambenek Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 10:15 am
The League is not a political organization in any sense of the word…they may be political in that they endorse a position but never a candidate, and never partisan…The Republicans were clever in that they co-opted the League in order to forward their own agenda and bash the Dems as well…I think they used up all their good will with the camapaign finance legislation passed last year…IMHO. the map will be increasingly Democratic whatever plan is adopted based on demographics…the Republicans in northern IL better run south of I-80…

Comment by Loop Lady Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 10:57 am
Instead of passing the Fair Map Amendment, I hope that Illinois will pass the Put-Back Amendment. It would ensure that redistricting is done by a computer program, which wouldn’t consider incumbents, parties, or ethnic groups. This would ensure more competitive elections. The Put-Back Amendment would also implement term limits, on state legislators, require the legislature to vote on bills that are sponsored by at least 25 members, and require the legislature to consider each bill for at least a week.

Comment by Conservative Veteran Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 11:03 am
What is the point here?
It isn’t the point to draw maps that favor a political party. It doesn’t matter if the gamers don’t win at this, because it shouldn’t be a game.

If YDD is right and the GOP still loses with a GOP drawn map - then there should be no reason to oppose a GOP drawn map, by his own logic. He claims it is a Democrat state, regardless. OK - so then why fight it?

A single party state government is always a bad idea, regardless of party.

Weaker teams get first draft picks. Weaker political parties should get to draw the maps. By doing this, there is an inherent way to establish party balance. It is a fairer way to boot. It doesn’t guarantee that the weaker party wins, because it is the weaker party and usually has real issues besides boundaries preventing it.

After each census, we have a new chance to make government better. We ought to do what we can to attain that goal, instead of what they’re doing now.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 11:46 am
===Weaker political parties should get to draw the maps. ===

So, your logic would mean the Green Party, the only legally “established” party without any GA seats, would get to draw the maps.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 11:48 am
VM: I beg to differ. A single party state government wouldn’t be so bad without the ego and power struggles…that is, if they could actually govern…

Comment by Loop Lady Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 11:51 am
You don’t scare me with that. Yeah - the Green party! It can’t be worse. The Greenies are full of goo-goos who will helicopter over every boundary drawn to ensure that no feathers are ruffled.

And Loop Lady, your statement is so dreamy!

No ego or power struggles, ’sigh!’ If that could be accomplished, it wouldn’t be here on Earth. Please don’t vote for that dream world, until you are reunited with your fellow angels in Heaven. On Earth, expect the opposite, especially in single party governments!

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 12:59 pm
I am askin people to support my push for the paint-ball mapping. We play a game of paintball, GOP and Dems, winner picks it.

Comment by Ghost Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 1:24 pm
==So, your logic would mean the Green Party, the only legally “established” party without any GA seats, would get to draw the maps.==

Hmmm… That’s too tempting for me to comment.

==The Greenies are full of goo-goos who will helicopter over every boundary drawn to ensure that no feathers are ruffled.==

My guess as to what the Green Party would do is to VOLUNTARILY either implement citizen redistricting by proxy or use semi-random computerized drawing.

Comment by Squideshi Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 1:55 pm
I see no one bothered to answer my question. Luckily I found them holding a press conference at the Old State Capitol this afternoon (they’re still there) and eagerly signed my name on the sheet.

Comment by Segatari Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 2:17 pm
===I see no one bothered to answer my question. ==

That’s because this isn’t Google.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 2:18 pm
–My guess as to what the Green Party would do is to VOLUNTARILY either implement citizen redistricting by proxy or use semi-random computerized drawing.–

You say your whatsit? What’s the upshot of the esoterica?

Comment by wordslinger Monday, Apr 19, 10 @ 3:08 pm