Latino group says Dem redistricting plan violates election law

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Updated: August 31, 2011 12:38AM

SPRINGFIELD — A new set of legislative boundaries Democrats drew up for the Illinois House and Senate advanced at the Statehouse Tuesday even though a top Latino advocacy group asserted that the plan broke federal election law.

By a 6-5 party-line vote, a House panel moved the maps to the House floor after a lengthy hearing that included opposition from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has sued in federal court to block redistricting proposals across the country.

The group argued that despite statewide population gains of nearly 500,000 for Latinos, legislative maps would fracture Latino communities on Chicago’s South Side and deprive them an opportunity to elect more Latinos to the state Legislature.

“We believe HB3760 does not create a sufficient number of districts for Latino electoral opportunity to comply with the Voting Rights Act,” said Nina Perales, the group’s vice president for litigation.

Perales said her organization would offer an alternative map Tuesday afternoon but would not say whether it would sue the state if Democrats don’t alter their plan to reflect the group’s concerns.

Redistricting is a once-a-decade process in which boundaries for the 59 Senate districts and 118 House districts are established based on population shifts and political considerations.

Democrats control the process this year because they run the Legislature and occupy the governor’s office. By virtue of that, the party is in a position to protect its incumbents for the next 10 years.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), chief House sponsor of the redistricting plan, said the way Democratic mapmakers carved up the state is legal despite the Latino group’s opposition, but she left open the possibility the maps could be altered before a floor vote.

“The overall map is, in my view, a map that’s fair,” she told a joint hearing of the House and Senate redistricting committees.

House Republicans seized on that comment by pointing to the fact more than a third of their members were drawn into some of the same districts, meaning they will have to run against one another in primaries or move to remain in the Legislature.

“There are 19 Republicans who would be in a district where there is more than one Republican, but only six Democrats who would be in a district,” Rep. Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago) told Currie.