Image: Mary Hall, Katherine Nagasawa / WBEZ
In an online story from WBEZ, Jim Lewis, a senior research specialist with UIC’s Great Cities Institute, offers insight on the process and laws surrounding the remapping of Chicago’s aldermanic ward boundaries.
“Every 10 years, we learn from the census what the population of different places is. … We learn that people have moved, people have been born, people have died,” said Jim Lewis, a senior researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago Great Cities Institute. “And so what was the same size 10 years ago is no longer the same size today.”
“There’s no law that says they have to be racially balanced — that only comes into play if you don’t do it, and somebody sues you,” Lewis said.
“Because of where people happen to live, it isn’t always easy,” Lewis said. “If you draw a checkerboard of the city, you wouldn’t get the racial ethnic representation that would represent the democratic proportions of different racial groups. And the reason is that in different parts of the city, different groups live in different concentrations. … You are going to have to draw some wards that are not squares or circles.”
“And there’s nothing in state or local law that says you can’t draw districts to favor particular incumbents or favor political parties,” Lewis said.
