No good guys in political gerrymandering — just winners and losers

National media remains laser-focused on Illinois as several Democratic state lawmakers from Texas have taken refuge in a west suburban hotel and convention center. Some have also sought cover in other Democratic-led states.

Their absence from a special session of the Texas Legislature has delayed movement on a Republican-led effort, in response to an appeal from President Donald Trump, to approve new congressional boundaries in an effort to get five more Republicans elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

While much of the attention is focused on the political drama of this moment — and its potential long-term ramifications — let’s not lose sight of the core issue: political gerrymandering. It’s one we’ve witnessed across the country since the early 1800s.

It makes a lot of sense that Texas Democrats chose to hide out in Illinois. After all, there’s a strong Democratic political base in Illinois, and the Democratic leadership here — particularly Gov. JB Pritzker — has firmly stood its ground in a war of words, over a variety of issues, with Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

But it’s ironic that Texas Democrats would flee in protest of Republican efforts to preserve power in Congress and seek solace in a state where fellow Democrats, for many years, have engaged in similar tactics to maintain political dominance here.

Nine years ago this month, the Illinois Supreme Court hammered the final nails in the coffin of the last major attempt at redistricting reform in this state.

In 2016, a coalition of groups gathered more than 560,000 signatures to get a redistricting reform question on that year’s November ballot. The ballot initiative asked voters to amend the state’s constitution to take the power of legislative mapmaking away from the Illinois General Assembly and give it to an independent commission, similar to those in a few other states.

In response, a group of Democratic Party loyalists filed suit claiming the proposed changes violated the narrow language in the state’s constitution allowing for such ballot initiatives. A lower court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the state’s high court affirmed that decision — killing the reform effort.

A new group has announced plans to launch another effort to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot for Illinois voters to consider. We’ll see where it goes, but a rocky road may lie ahead.

Whether it’s Texas Republicans seeking to gerrymander congressional boundaries or Illinois Democrats preserving their control to set state legislative boundaries here, power brokers in state legislatures across the country are notorious for drawing political boundaries to their advantage.

There are no good guys in political gerrymandering, just winners and losers. In each redistricting fight, one party wins and the other party loses — it just depends on which party is in control.

But regular people lose every time. It’s often said that politicians choose their voters when they draw political maps, when it should be the other way around.

Protections to combat such political gerrymandering were weakened in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts." Some pundits say that ruling — which was split along ideological lines in favor of the court’s conservative majority — paved the way for Texas Republicans to take their current course.

And Texas appears to be just the first of several states considering similar mid-decade redistricting efforts, a process that has almost exclusively occurred in a year or two after each decennial census. There are discussions taking place in Republican-led states like Indiana, Missouri and Florida. Meanwhile, some Democratic-led states are also discussing similar plans to fight fire with fire. In California, there’s been talk about potentially sidestepping that state’s independent redistricting commission in an effort to increase the number of Democrats in Congress.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion for the 2019 gerrymandering ruling, asserted that there’s no constitutional authority for federal judges to intervene in the politics of redistricting. He also questioned what would be the standards for which judicial intervention should be determined, asking "how much is too much?"

I’m no constitutional expert, but what’s beginning to unfold is starting to look like we’re about to go completely off the rails.

It seems clear to me that it’s time for a change in how we draw political boundaries. For the vast majority of states, the power to redraw legislative boundaries are in the wrong hands — no matter which party is in control.

Perhaps it’s also clear in this current political climate that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party will make change voluntarily. Everyday citizens may have to force their hands.

Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.