Chicago Ward Redistricting 101: Statistics, Factions and Conflicting Interests

While next year's city budget has dominated city politics over the past few weeks, another, equally important, controversy is brewing in the background. According to municipal law, every city ward must have the same number of people, so every ten years the Chicago City Council redraws the ward boundaries to account for population changes. Unfortunately, ward redistricting is not simply a matter of balancing the numbers. The City Council has several different factions, or caucus, and each faction is interested in maintaining and, if possible, increasing its numbers.

Minority representation is another concern. Under the Voting Rights Act, wards where minority groups make up more than 50 percent of the population cannot be split up in order to dilute their strength as a voting block. The state version of the act takes that principle even further, prohibiting the split of the wards where more than 50 percent of the population share the same ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and other "common concerns."

Over the past decade, the city's African-American population dropped dramatically, while the Hispanic population has increased. The Latino Caucus is trying to create at least six new majority-Hispanic wards. Meanwhile, the Black Caucus is trying its best to maintain 19 of the 20 majority-Black wards. The Latino Caucus has argued that the Black Caucus should give up at least two more wards, something the Black Caucus has not been willing to do as of this writing.

As the Latino Caucus tries to expand, it may potentially run afoul of the unofficial faction that can best be described as the Old Guard. This faction traces its roots to the traditional Democratic Machine. They represent wards that were traditionally ethnically white (Irish-American, Polish-American, etc). However, over the past ten years, most of these wards saw an increase in Hispanic population. What's more, these increases account for most of the Hispanic population growth in the city. In order to create more majority-Hispanic wards, the Old Guard would have to give up some of their territory. However, the Latino Caucus would face an uphill struggle. The Old Guard aldermen may not be as powerful as they once were but they still wield considerable influence. Most notably, Ald. Richard Mell (32^nd ward) chairs the Rules Committee, which is responsible for approving the redrawn map.

 There is also the matter of the Reform Caucus. This loose coalition works to make the city government more inclusive and transparent. The Reform Caucus' numbers nearly doubled during the last election, as several reform candidates won what were supposed to be safe Old Guard strongholds. Ald. Joe Moore, the chair of the Reform Caucus, announced that the Caucus would try to preserve as many of their wards as they can. The Reform Caucus is a multi-racial coalition, which causes some inter-caucus overlap. For example, Ald. Rick Munoz (22^nd ward) is a member of the Latino caucuses, while Ald Pat Dowell (3^rd ward) is a member of the Black caucus. Whether or not this overlap will have any effect on border redrawing is unclear.

Finally, Chicago's Chinese-American community has been lobbying for the creation of the city's first Asian-American ward. Over the past ten years, the Chinese-American population in Chinatown and the surrounding neighborhoods increased enough to form a majority. However, this population is currently split between the majority-Hispanic 25^th Ward, majority-Black 3^rd Ward, the Reform Caucus 2^nd Ward and the Old Guard 11^th ward. Suffice it to say, any attempt to carve out an Asian-American ward would face many obstacles and would involve very complex negotiations.