Phillies in Five!!!

or, Why Redistricting Matters

Cross posted from ICPR's blog, The Race is On:

The Philadelphia Phillies are facing elimination tonight in game 6 of the World Series. One week ago, their ace pitcher led the team to a clear 6-1 rout of the Yankees, but New York came back to win the next three by scores of 3-1, 8-5, and 7-4. Philadelphia won the fifth game 8-6, but they have to win both remaining games to take the Series.

If the Phillies had scored the same number of runs in different games, the Series would be very different. If the Phillies, for instance, could move 3 runs from game 1 to game 2, they'd still have won the first game, 3-1, but they also would have won the second game 4-3. In which case, it'd be the Yankees facing elimination. And indeed, if you drained the Phillies' excess runs from games 1 and 5 and moved them to games two and three, while also moving a few Yankee runs from those games into game 4, one could have engineered a Philadelphia Championship last Monday night.

Of course, the Yankees could plot similar changes. They've outscored the Phillies, and could re-jigger their runs into a five-game Championship (they'd still need five games anyway you slice it, but moving one run each from games 2, 3, and 4 into game 5 would have ended the Series).

Now, the purists will insist that's not how the game of baseball is played. Runs count only in the game in which they are scored. But that's exactly how the game of redistricting works. Voters can be moved from one district to another.

Suppose you're a public official who squeaks by each election, while a friendly official in a neighboring district coasts to victory time and time again. Couldn't you take a few of their voters, who'd be only too happy to vote for you, and ditch some of the malcontents who don't appreciate your candidacies? If you're always drawing 52%-55% of the vote to your neighbor's 72-75%, just by trading a few precincts, you could both get a comfortable 60% without too much trouble. You get to spend more time with your family at election time (without leaving office!) and the voters? They get you to represent them. What's not to like?

A lot, actually, Redistricting is never a benign process. Redistricting can inflate a political majority, deny representation to minorities, and insulate officials from the normal checks on power that elections are supposed to bring. Especially when redistricting is dominated by one political party, as it has been in Illinois for the last three maps, the process can hand an enormous electoral advantage to the side that draws the lines.

Redistricting is a necessary part of governing. Districts should be roughly equal in population, so as people move around, districts should be redrawn. They should also be crafted so that the governing body, as a whole, most accurately reflects the voters, as a whole. But how you draw the lines, how you slice the dirt, can determine who votes for which officials, who can run against which officials, and ultimately who gets to be an official. It's not surprise that officials take a keen interest in redistricting.

Most voters don't seem to follow the process. But it's not too late. Maps get drawn in 2011, after the 2010 census. If you want to learn more about how the process works, the redistricting game, which was put together by the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California, is a great place to start.

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Tie-breakers

By Patrick O’Brien
The House approved a constitutional amendment today that would try to take the politics out of redrawing the state’s legislative map every 10 years. (See more here.)

Many supporters and opponents of the measure said any change would be better than the existing system, which has resulted in a draw out of a hat three consecutive times because lawmakers hit a stalemate. “Determining the future of Illinois based on the flip of a coin is irresponsible,” said Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat, during debate.

Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat, said the framers of the 1970 Illinois Constitution thought that the tie-breaker provision would be enough to make any sensible, responsible party compromise. “It turns out, we’ve had three opportunities. And three times, we’ve struck out.” She said the proposal would “do the job” in forcing a compromise.

Under the plan, sponsored by Rep. James Brosnahan, an Evergreen Park Democrat, a stalemate over who would redraw the map would result in the Illinois Supreme Court appointing a “special master” to oversee the process. Each chamber of the General Assembly also would approve its own map with a three-fifths vote.

Opponents said the proposal lacks specificity in multiple areas, including the role of the state’s high court and the criterion for selecting a special master.

The House approved the measure, 98-10 with one voting present, but House Minority Leader Tom Cross, an Oswego Republican, said the bill is presumed dead on arrival in the Senate. Even if approved by both chambers, 60 percent of the public would still have to vote for the idea before the state Constitution could change.

We remain flat
By Bethany Jaeger
Only 19 senators voted in support of asking the public whether the state should allow a graduated income tax rate to replace the existing flat rate. That’s far short of the 36 votes needed, indicating most senators are unwilling to support something that looks like a tax increase right now, particularly during an election year.

“I just think we need to escape the politics of self-preservation,” Sen. Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat and co-sponsor of the measure, said after the vote. He and Sen. Michael Frerichs, a Champaign Democrat, said they pursued the constitutional amendment to give the state flexibility in revising its tax structure so that it could establish a system less reliant on local property and consumption taxes, which often burden the low- and middle-income taxpayers.

Republicans voiced opposition to the measure because they said it would pave the way to increased income taxes. That would be a “killer” for small businesses and job creation, said Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican, during floor debate. Republicans also said the proposal fails to address high property taxes and lacks details, leaving voters vulnerable to a tax-and-spend approach to state government without public input.

Another income tax proposal, meanwhile, is still in the works in the House. It originally tried to set new, tiered rates for individuals making more than $250,000 a year, but it narrowly failed. It’s expected to come back in some form.

Coming up
Watch for more updates regarding Senate action on another constitutional amendment to let voters recall elected officials and on ethics reform to ban so-called pay-to-play politics.

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Do-overs

By Bethany Jaeger
Thursday’s House rejection of a new state income tax structure isn’t a done deal. We knew it could come back in some form, but Rep. Gary Hannig, a Litchfield Democrat and deputy majority leader, filed a “motion to reconsider” after yesterday’s vote. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to see record of Hannig’s motion.) The maneuver allows the chamber to take another whack at the same legislation, maybe with some changes.

Twice last year legislators used the motion to block legislation from advancing even though it received enough votes to pass. Senate Democratic leadership halted an electricity rate deal from advancing to accommodate a particular utility (scroll down to "procedural maneuvering"). Downstate House members stopped a budget deal from advancing to gain leverage for electricity rate relief.

Hannig’s move was the opposite. The income tax measure failed, and Hannig was one voting against it. He said in a phone conversation Friday that he told the sponsor, Rep. Mike Smith, a Canton Democrat involved in education matters and passionate about education funding reform, that he agreed with him philosophically but didn’t think the constitutional amendment was ready to go on the ballot. So Hannig voted against the measure, but he filed a motion to reconsider so that Smith would have an opportunity to bring the measure back with some changes that potentially could change some Democratic and Republican “no” votes to “yes” votes.

So, yes, you can bet on Smith’s measure coming back sooner rather than later. Constitutional amendments must be approved by both chambers before May 4, and given that the measure still needs to be revised, approved by the House, read three different times and approved in the Senate, with a week off April 21-25, Hannig said the House would need to reconsider the measure rather quickly.

Rewriting the rules
By Bethany Jaeger
House Speaker Michael Madigan sent a letter to lawmakers today to describe implications of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Jesse White. White’s office refused to publish administrative rules to the governor’s desired health care expansions because the rules never received approval from the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. Because the two offices disagree on the authority of JCAR and, therefore, the ability to publish the rules so the administration can enact the expansions, they want direction from the court, as one agency spokeswoman said this morning. “Both parties in this case recognize that the lawsuit is part of a process intended to clarify the laws surrounding healthcare expansions and JCAR’s constitutional standing,” said Ruth Igoe, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which filed the suit and runs the programs. “We consider this an amicable process.”

Madigan disagrees and described the lawsuit in the letter as a “back-door effort to implement the governor’s policies.”

“The lawsuit, filed at the governor’s direction, is an explicit statement that he does not want executive agencies to work in a cooperative manner with the legislature,” he wrote.

The governor’s office did not return a phone call.

Watch Illinois Issues magazine for more about the implications of the lawsuit.

Redrawing the map
By Patrick O’Brien
The battle that ensues every 10 years to draw the map for legislative districts could be solved by more than names drawn from hat if a new measure becomes law.

The proposed constitutional amendment has the support of House Speaker Michael Madigan, according to Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Lawrence, long-time journalist and former spokesman for then-Gov. Jim Edgar, says the proposal would take the element of chance out of the controversial task of updating district boundaries every 10 years. And it would be designed to make it easier for the two chambers to compromise. Currently, both chambers must agree on the same map. Under this proposal, the House and Senate would draw and approve separate maps, essentially controlling their own destinies.

If the two parties can’t agree on how to compose the map, two Illinois Supreme Court justices would appoint a so-called special master to redraw the map. The special master usually is a lawyer, Lawrence says.

Since 1981, lawmakers have come to a standstill three times. So they randomly drew from a hat to pick the winning party that would redraw the map.

Control of the process typically benefits that party, often because districts are oddly designed to produce certain results.

For the state’s Republican Party, the next redistricting in 2010 may be especially important because of the changing demographics of Illinois, particularly in the Chicago suburbs.

The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., reported last month that self-identified Republicans account for only 25 percent of Illinoisans. Democrats account for 35 percent, and independents 40 percent.

As more people leave Chicago and Cook County for the suburbs, Democrats gain strength in the suburban counties.

Lawrence says the plan would take some of the political venom out of the process and restore geographical sense to the map.

A House committee will hold a public hearing on the measure next week.

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