Chicago Tribune: Democrats may use population estimates for redistricting, raising questions about fairness of maps
Chicago Tribune: Democrats may use population estimates for redistricting, raising questions about fairness of maps
Illinois Democrats face mounting questions about what data they will use as an alternative to the federal census — and if that choice would shortchange the racial and ethnic communities that are a core of the party — as they attempt to meet a June 30 deadline to draw new political boundaries.
Groups representing Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and other communities have urged Democrats to use actual federal census numbers rather than estimates or other data in preparing new boundary lines for the 118 members of the House, 59 members of the Senate and the districts for the state’s congressional delegation.
But due to delays caused by the pandemic, hard census data won’t be available until mid-August at the earliest. And if Democrats were to delay the state legislative mapmaking process past a constitutionally set date of June 30, they risk giving minority Republicans a 50-50 chance of winning the right to draw new boundaries for the General Assembly that will stand for the next decade.
Democrats have said they intend to finish the legislative mapmaking process by June 30, ensuring they will be relying on alternative data to the actual federal 2020 census. …
A number of groups advocating accuracy in counting the population, including racial and ethnic communities, found instances of wide variances when comparing the ACS estimates with actual 2010 census counts.
The ACS estimates do not go down to the block level reached by the federal census. That has various civil rights groups warning that using the survey to draw map lines may run counter to federal voting rights laws aimed at ensuring boundaries allow for representation from ethnic and racial communities.
The groups also note the state spent more than $31 million on efforts to ensure an accurate 2020 census count during a deadly pandemic, particularly to ensure adding traditionally undercounted populations to the final count.
The American Community Survey, a product of the federal Census Bureau known as the ACS, is the likely alternative to the actual results from the 2020 federal census. Other states also are looking at the ACS as an alternative.
The ACS is an ongoing survey in which about 3.5 million households are asked for information. In contrast to the actual census, which is supposed to count all U.S. households, the survey produces estimates to forecast trend. The latest survey is from 2019.
“Those are the people I feel have been dishonored by the path that the Illinois General Assembly has now chosen,” said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois. “It should be the job of our elected officials to sort of recognize that this challenge exists, to recognize that they’re not going to be able to draw the district lines with any degree of specificity, they’re not going to be able to draw equal districts.” …
Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause, said to rely on survey data to draw maps “is a guaranteed malapportionment lawsuit.”
“I think the biggest challenge with that is not that we won’t win. It’s the timing. To get the lawsuit across, you’ve got to wait for potentially the new (census) data to come out … sometime between August and September,” Feng said.
“If the court feels like it’s too close to the election, as we saw with many COVID cases, that it may, even if it finds the lines have been drawn in a way that was in malapportionment of population, they can’t unwind it until after the election. And so that would be a fear,” she said.