Illinois Valley Times

State Rep. Win Stoller (R-Peoria) used a recent Senate Redistricting Committee hearing to hammer home his concerns about delayed census data and the impact he fears it could have.

“The census data has been delayed and I understand that's the gold standard and best data that we'd have but are you concerned that the map might be drawn without having that data?” Stoller asked Al Hooks of the NAACP. “There is a June 30 deadline that would allow the majority party to draw the map.”

As the back-and-forth intensified, Stoller pointed out that there is a provision in the state constitution that would allow officials to have until Oct. 5 to draw maps with the best data available.

“Just to be clear, this would not be altering anything,” he added. “This has been in the constitution for decades and it's been used before.”

The practice of gerrymandering has become so commonplace in Illinois it’s now trickled to the state prison system.

Even though lawmakers recently passed a bill that outlaws prison gerrymandering, the practice is expected to linger until at least 2031 based on a clause that delays its implementation.

Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated people at their prison’s location rather than their last residence for the purposes of redistricting and apportionment.

“If there is a consensus that this is an unjust way of counting population, and that counting population really matters for our government functions and the services that residents receive in the community, then it matters in 2021, and it matters for the next 10 years,” Louisa Manske, the policy and communications director at Chicago-based Workers Center For Racial Justice, told The Appeal: Political Report.

Even after it is implemented, some lament the reform will only impact how the state legislature’s districts are drawn and will have no effect on the way gerrymandering impacts congressional or local districts.