Imagine going to a doctor for an unknown ailment and being told that she’s just going to assume you have such-and-such and treat you accordingly.
“Whoa, hold on, doc,” you might protest. “Aren’t you going to examine me first and maybe run some tests?”
Estimates have their place, but you can’t beat accuracy. Why settle for less, especially when hard data is available?
Well, for one thing, estimates are easier to fudge.
Take St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern’s redrawing of the county’s voting districts, for instance, a classic example of gerrymandering based on “estimates.”
“The major issue is, they’re not using a census,” lone Republican board member Ed Cockrell complained in May, as the Democrat majority preferred to rush passage of a woefully flawed map. Why not wait a couple of months for real numbers produced by the census? It’s the best way to provide equitable distribution of board members.
The answer is simple: a redistricted map based on real population figures would produce more Republican and fewer Democrat members, and a real map could possibly strip the machine from its stranglehold on county governance.
O’Fallon attorney Paul Evans is challenging Kern’s map in federal court on behalf of Cockrell and County Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Cheryl Matthews.
“It is possible to draw county board districts with substantially less deviation under the guidelines imposed by Illinois law,” Evans notes, demonstrating that it can be done by proposing one of his own, using the results of the most recent census.
Evans emphasizes that Illinois law requires that county board districts be equal in population and territorially compact, and that maps not be manipulated for partisan political advantage. “Compact means closely united,” he explains.
Evans contends that the map approved by the board establishes oddly-shaped districts that unnecessarily cross township lines in violation of state law and some have wildly unequal population levels.
Opportunity to reshape political lines locally and nationally comes around every 10 years following release of the U.S. Census. On the national level, unsurprisingly, blue states have lost congressional seats because their populations have migrated to red states. St. Clair County is a microcosm of what’s happening in America, and its political boundaries should reflect that reality.