Concerned Citizens of Chatham: CHICAGO SOUTH House Redistricting Hearing

Concerned Citizens of Chatham: CHICAGO SOUTH House Redistricting Hearing:

Wednesday
April 20,2011
4:00 p.m.
Chicago State University
Library Auditorium
9501 S. King Dr.

Public discussion with civic groups, community organizations to provide input on the decennial legislative and congressional mapmaking process, Guests include State Representatives Monique D. Davis, Ken Dunkin, Ester Golar, Constance A. Howard, and Andre Thapedi and members of the redistricting committee, Free parking, use 95th and St. Lawrence entrance, Information, Call 217-782-4040

Hyde Park Progress: South Side Politics is About to Change Big Time

The Hyde Park blog talks about how ward redistricting well affect that part of the city. As we know all the Black wards had lost population within the last 10 years. Each ward has to be at least populated by 54,000 residents. So that may mean that the 6th would be a much larger ward geographically. And many of the other wards that had lost population may well be larger geographically as well.

When does the city council take up drawing up the wards for the next decade?

About a documentary on the practice of "gerrymandering"

Courtesy of Reason.tv. Bill Mundell is the executive producer for a documentary filmed called appropriately enough Gerrymandering. It's about the practice of drawing political districts with the intent of assuring a desired result, mainly for instance to insure that an incumbent will remain in office. Or to explain further to create a district that will allow the incument to remain in office.

Of course this also involves racial gerrymandering. For example there were several lawsuits in the 90s - Shaw v. Reno (1993), Miller v. Johnson (1995), & Bush v. Vera (1996) - about creating these "majority-minority" Congressional districts mainly to insure that racial/ethnic minorities will have representation in the US House of Representatives. Or to ensure that the US House will have members of different racial or ethnic backgrounds representing districts that have a majority population of a racial or ethnic group.

Here in our state this issue will affect us. Soon the political districts from the city wards, to the county districts, to the state legislative districts, to the congressional districts will be redrawn. Remember that the US Census was conducted this year. When it's time for redistricting a lot of boundaries are going to change and there will be a consideration of many factors in drawing a district. The consideration might be of race/ethnicity, income, partisan affiliation to name a few factors that come to mind right now.

Also remember that back during the height of the historic "council wars" in the mid 1980s, city wards were redrawn after a lawsuit to allow for more wards drawn to insure representation for Blacks and Hispanics in Chicago.

Also I believe when many were advocating for constitutional convention during the 2008 Presidential election there were those who were talking about how redistricting was done in this state. I'm sure many of them are still talking about that as it's again time to redraw the various political maps of this state. However there are proposals to have computers redraw the political maps.

Either way, just know this issue is coming in the near future. Not only are we voting for legislators and Congressman on Tuesday, but for Alderman in February. When things settle down from those elections many may well represent vastly different districts in the future.

Crossposted @ Mechanics!