As fears of recent high-profile violence in Chinatown explode, community residents and stakeholders differ over what kind of alderman should represent the first Asian-majority ward, should it come to fruition.
Because of the pandemic, in 2020 the legislature was thrown a bit off course, so there weren't a ton of laws that took effect at the start of 2021. Not so for 2022. Dozens of measures will kick in starting Saturday.
The final map crafted by the Chicago Ward Advisory Redistricting Commission would increase the number of wards where Latinos make up a majority of residents by one to 14, while reducing the number of wards with a majority of Black voters by three to 15 wards.
By Peter Hancock
Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers opened their first public hearing Tuesday on a proposed set of new House and Senate district maps with Democrats and Republicans still at sharp odds over how the maps were drawn and whether or not they are fair.
House and Senate Democrats unveiled the proposed maps last week. They were reportedly drawn using population estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey because official numbers from the 2020 census will not be available until August or September.
Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who was hired as a consultant by the House and Senate Democratic caucuses, testified that in his opinion, ACS data is acceptable to use for redistricting because in the five years leading up to the 2010 census, those estimates for Illinois were off by only about 0.3 percent.