Gerrymandering district should be against the law

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Updated: July 13, 2011 2:14AM

The Democratic-controlled Illinois Legislature and governor drafted a congressional map clearly designed to help their party to win back all or most of the five seats they lost last year.

Editorial writers and good-government organizations are outraged at the gerrymandering that will place those fledgling Republicans in new, Democrat-majority districts or pit two incumbent Republicans against each other in a single tract.

“Lawsuit! Lawsuit!” cry the Republicans, fully aware that no court has ever found partisan political gerrymandering to be unlawful. Racial gerrymandering, designed to minimize minority representation, has indeed been found unlawful — so much so that the courts prescribe super majorities for African American or Latino districts to assure fairness.

Look, for instance, at the bizarre shape of the district in Chicago and nearby suburbs created to assure Latino congressional representation without impinging on black representation. It incorporates jagged pockets of Latinos on the city’s North and South Sides, connected by a sawtoothed, U-shaped band of land encircling the African-American West Side. It looks like a pair of headphones on crack.

Luis Gutierrez has occupied it since its inception in the last century and the new version extends a little finger of land to reach the congressman’s current suburban home.

Back in 1971, after a remap of Chicago’s 50 wards, I brought to the attention of several sharp civil rights lawyers, including the irreplaceable Robert Plotkin and his then-partner, the equally irreplaceable Michael Shakman, the fact that the map shortchanged the black population by about four wards, had no Latino ward and discriminated against independent voters on the lakefront.

They developed a suit that did not get very far, but within a couple of decades, similar suits changed the political topography of Chicago — and the principles began to be litigated nationally. Indeed, racial gerrymandering was outlawed everywhere — though the correctives created some weird shapes. None was as goofy as the Gutierrez district but far crazier than the original Massachusetts district created in 1812 by Gov. Eldridge Gerry that gave the manipulation its name.

(“It looks like a salamander,” said one reformer — “No,” said a wittier one. “It’s a Gerrymander.”)

In 2003, the Texas legislature went one better by remapping its districts in mid-decade instead of waiting for the 2010 census — wiping out five Democratic seats. This was found to be quite legal — though its progenitor, Tom DeLay, went to the slammer for other sins.

It’s all unfair, but it’s done almost everywhere one party controls the legislature and governorship. So why should Illinois play fair when everyone else is cheating?

We need a federal law outlawing political gerrymandering, creating a 50-state level playing field. Let an independent, nonpartisan commission draw computerized lines and forget about protecting incumbents. We’ll all benefit from a less partisan, less vicious Congress.

The irreplaceable civil liberties lawyer Tom Geoghegan determined there are First Amendment grounds to force such a law. He’s right, as usual, but is anyone of either party ready for genuine fairness?

Political consultant Don Rose writes for the Chicago Daily Observer, where this was posted.