Just when you thought the politics of 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, consider this: Delays at the U.S. Census Bureau may let Illinois Republicans draw our state legislative district maps for the 2020s — even though they hold no statewide offices and are in a superminority in the General Assembly.
Between the COVID-19 pandemic, political maneuvering and bureaucratic stumbling, there has been considerable confusion and temporizing about the dates and deadlines for the 2020 U.S. census. The result is that for the first time in living memory, the census results may arrive late.
Typically, the census kicks off on April 1 of each year ending in a 0, followed by door-knocking and follow-up for several months to find and count every U.S. resident. This crucial follow-up process was originally set to be finalized on Sept. 30 this year. After this, the Census Bureau does its statistical magic, reporting its results to the president on Jan. 1, and then to the states for redistricting purposes on the following March 31.
A 1975 federal statute established this March 31 data delivery deadline to give states time to adopt and implement new legislative maps before the next set of elections, the process for which begins in the fall of the year after the census. The deadlines set for Illinois’ redistricting process are based on this March 31 data delivery. But while the federal deadline is statutory and thus can be changed legislatively, Illinois’ deadlines are set in its constitution.
As we all know, 2020 is no ordinary year. In April, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Trump administration to ask for more time to get the census done. This involved pushing back the follow-up period to end on Oct. 31 and the state data-reporting date to July 1, 2021. Over the summer, the Trump administration reversed itself, proposing a return to the Sept. 30 follow-up deadline, but last week it lost a federal court case challenging the move. The debate between the Trump administration and the courts on this deadline continues. Meanwhile, Congress is considering the administration’s request to push back the deadline to deliver these data to the states from March 31 to July 31.
So what does all this back and forth mean for Illinois redistricting? Quite simply, it could result in a political earthquake in the state — if the deadline for state data delivery is pushed back until next summer.
Like most states, Illinois draws its legislative boundaries through the normal legislative process — if an agreement can be reached. Given the uber-partisan politics behind redistricting, this means that if one party controls both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s office (and if that party can agree among its members), that party gets to draw the legislative maps as it sees fit. When the Illinois General Assembly takes up redistricting in 2021, Democrats will likely control all three legs of this process, and so they should be expected to adopt district maps that favor their party, just as they did in 2011.
If the legislature and governor can’t agree on a set of maps by June 30 of the year after the census, Article IV, section 3 of the 1970 Illinois Constitution shifts the process to a bipartisan redistricting commission and, if needed (and it will be), a random tiebreaker, which will give one of the parties the power to draw legislative districts unilaterally. Redistricting played out this way when Illinois had divided government in 1981, 1991 and 2001.
But if Congress approves the Trump administration’s requested delay, the census data will not reach Illinois until one month after the constitutional deadline to finalize the maps before going to the commission and tiebreaker.
And, remember, the Illinois deadline is constitutional, making it impossible to change before the current deadlines kick in. The Democrats’ only hope to avoid a coin toss for control would be if the Illinois Supreme Court interprets the state constitution to allow a delay in the map-drawing process, although the constitution’s plain language makes this unlikely.
Thus, the Trump administration’s inability to get the U.S. census done on time may give Illinois Republicans a 50-50 chance of unilaterally establishing the General Assembly’s district maps for the next 10 years.
Christopher Z. Mooney is W. Arrington Professor of State Politics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs.
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