http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opin ... 6279.story
Thoughts?...Who'll win the right to set legislative boundaries after the 2010 federal census? This we know, little voter: It won't be you. The cliché is a cliché because it's maddeningly correct: In Illinois, lawmakers choose their constituents, not the other way around.
This isn't criminal corruption of the types that ended our last two governorships. It is, though, a key reason we live in The Incumbent State. The power to map lets party leaders keep their Senate and House members in line.
Mapping doesn't dictate the outcome of every race. But maps do corral voters -- mine here, yours over there -- in ways that stifle competition. Safe candidates don't need to develop broad appeal. A less partisan system of drawing district lines would produce more centrists -- and fewer ideologues. And it would put more incumbents at risk of being booted out by voters if they engage in shady practices.
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There's a better way and Illinois lawmakers should adopt it. The national model for reform is just across the Mississippi River.
Every 10 years, three employees in Iowa's nonpartisan legislative research agency -- a computer wizard, a lawyer and a geographer -- produce maps. Legislators vote the maps up or down. We're cutting corners here, but if all else fails, the Iowa Supreme Court gets involved. That doesn't happen, though: Legislators know that a fair map they dislike could get better, or worse.
Springfield insiders know the Iowa protocol and they hate it. It would diminish their power. So they smirk and say Iowa has fewer minorities. Iowa is a smaller state. Iowa's system won't work in precious Illinois.
Bunk. Iowa officials execute the same exercises that Illinois officials perform to assure compliance with the race-sensitive Voting Rights Act of 1965. What distinguishes Iowa isn't demographics or size. Nor does Iowa have particularly unique mapping software. So, could replication of Iowa's system create more competitive races not just there, but in all 50 states? "There's no reason you couldn't do it everywhere," says Ed Cook, the lawyer in Iowa's mapmaking trio.
What distinguishes Iowa's system are the specific legal principles that lawmakers have built into the Iowa Code. The net effect is that mapmakers wind up following a prioritized list of strict, objective criteria on such variables as what importance to give county borders, how to split urban areas into districts, whether to pay more attention to census tract lines or precinct lines, and so on.
"The system intentionally limits our options as much as possible," Cook says. "We exclude consideration of where incumbents live, party registration of voters, past election results, demographic data like the income of a district." And the inevitable pressure from legislators to skew the map? "They can try. We just ignore it. Our law is clear."
