Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by sswerdlow2015-02-11T12:09:35-06:00https://chicago.suntimes.com/authors/sswerdlow/rss2015-02-11T12:09:35-06:002019-05-11T07:44:15-05:00Analysis: Has Chicago become a pension fund with a city attached? - Chicago
<p>Gov. Pat Quinn has offered up a new way to pay down the pension debt cities and towns across Illinois have accumulated: increase the share of income tax revenue the state doles out to municipalities. The governor <a class="Link" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/quinn-state-revenue-sharing-could-help-fix-chicago-pensions/mon-04282014-217pm" target="_blank" >floated</a> this proposal during his remarks at the City Club of Chicago luncheon on Monday.</p><p>Relief cannot come soon enough for Chicago. Currently the City of Chicago has more than $19 billion in pension debt. That’s five times the city’s entire 2014 operating budget.</p><p>We already<a class="Link" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/scorecard-chicagos-pension-funds/mon-04072014-612pm" target="_blank" > looked</a> at the state of each of these funds. See how things stack up for the city in the infographic below:</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center><div class="Enhancement-item">
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<div class="infogram-embed" data-id="chicago-pension-scorecard" data-type="interactive" data-title="The city of chicago has more than $19 billion in pension debt"></div><script>!function(e,i,n,s){var t="InfogramEmbeds",d=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement("script");o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src="https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js",d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,"infogram-async");</script><div style="padding:8px 0;font-family:Arial!important;font-size:13px!important;line-height:15px!important;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #dadada;margin:0 30px"><a href="https://infogram.com/chicago-pension-scorecard" style="color:#989898!important;text-decoration:none!important;" target="_blank">The city of chicago has more than $19 billion in pension debt</a><br><a href="https://infogram.com" style="color:#989898!important;text-decoration:none!important;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Infogram</a></div>
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</div></div><p><a class="Link" href="https://infogr.am/chicago-pension-scorecard" target="_blank" >The city of chicago has more than $19 billion in pension debt</a> | <a class="Link" href="https://infogr.am" target="_blank" >Create infographics</a><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2015/2/11/18570564/analysis-has-chicago-become-a-pension-fund-with-a-city-attachedsswerdlow2015-01-26T12:44:26-06:002019-05-09T09:36:43-05:00Analysis: Disparities in pot arrests reveal two Chicagos - Chicago
<p>When it comes to punishment for pot, where you are matters more than what you do according to a recently released <a class="Link" href="http://www.roosevelt.edu/icdp" target="_blank" >Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy</a> report.</p><p>For example, Fuller Park has a higher marijuana arrest rate than any other Chicago neighborhood. In this mostly African-American, south-side neighborhood, police made 32 marijuana arrests for every 1,000 residents in 2013. That is almost ten times the typical arrest rate in the city.</p><p>The consortium claims Fuller Park’s extreme arrest rate is the result of the city’s patchwork legal system, which lets Chicago police choose whether to issue a ticket for pot possession under ten grams or make an arrest.</p><p>As illustrated in the map below, this discretion leads to significant discrepancies in marijuana enforcement. Those neighborhoods with the highest arrest rates are shaded in red; those with the lowest in green.</p><p>[iframe width=”100%” height=”900″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”no” src=”https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?q=select+col12+from+1bdXNASF916xmyVV74MSpPnHqfK69RM51H6B7DDjZ&viz=MAP&h=false&lat=41.842242746039176&lng=-87.70671961621093&t=1&z=11&l=col12&y=2&tmplt=2&hml=GEOCODABLE”]</p><p> Arrest rates were calculated using data from the City of Chicago as reported by the <a class="Link" href="http://www.roosevelt.edu/~/media/Files/pdfs/CAS/ICDP/PatchworkPolicyFullReport.ashx" target="_blank" >consortium</a>.</p><p>Despite the ticketing alternative, nine out of ten times Chicago police opt to make an arrest for pot possession.</p><p>All but one of the neighborhoods in the top 20 percent for marijuana arrests is majority black. According to the <a class="Link" href="http://www.samhsa.gov/" target="_blank" >Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration</a>, marijuana use is not more common among African Americans. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population, and 11 percent of illicit drug users.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Chicago cops likely to arrest—not ticket—for pot possession Is Chicago segregated, and does it matter?</p></blockquote>
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<p>Plotting a community’s arrest rate against the share of its population that is African American, it is easy to see the upward trend. High arrest rates are much more common is black neighborhoods.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>“When you are talking about a rate of arrest that is 150 times higher in a Chicago neighborhood like East Garfield Park, as compared to Edison Park,” said Kathie Kane-Willis, the consortium’s executive director, “you have to conclude that the system is fundamentally flawed.”</p><p>To reverse these racial disparities in pot enforcement, the consortium advocates making marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority for Chicago police and ultimately legalizing marijuana so its sale is licensed, regulated and taxed.</p><p><small><i>Get the </i></small><a class="Link" href="https://github.com/scarlettswerdlow/arrests" target="_blank" ><small><i>data</i></small></a><small><i> and </i></small><a class="Link" href="https://github.com/scarlettswerdlow/arrests" target="_blank" ><small><i>code</i></small></a><small><i> used in this analysis.</i></small><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2015/1/26/18540693/analysis-disparities-in-pot-arrests-reveal-two-chicagossswerdlow2015-01-26T12:42:15-06:002019-05-11T11:29:19-05:00How segregated is Chicago, and does it matter? - Chicago
<p>In a provocative piece sweeping the Internet, <a class="Link" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" target="_blank" >The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations</a>. His central piece of evidence: Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, where nine out of ten residents are black, 43 percent of people live in poverty, and the homicide rate is three times the rate of the city as a whole.</p><p>Confronted by these facts, Coates claims, “Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city.”</p><p>Is Coates right? Is Chicago so segregated that blacks and whites essentially live in different cities?</p><p>We constructed a segregation score for each Chicago community area by looking at the fraction of the population that blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians account for. A score of zero means a neighborhood’s residents are all of the same race. Neighborhoods with scores closer to 100 are more diverse. In Chicago, the highest possible score is 80. See each community’s score in the map below.</p><p>[iframe width=”100%” height=”900″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”no” src=”https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?q=select+col4+from+1RaOjTWdij1bPQVfYCjZa3-q0v6-9StW3g4igIMGL&viz=MAP&h=false&lat=41.85962210451147&lng=-87.66962168995934&t=1&z=11&l=col4&y=2&tmplt=2&hml=KML”]</p><p>By this measure, Rogers Park is Chicago’s most diverse community area. Whites make up 39 percent of the population, blacks 26 percent, Latinos 24 percent, and Asians 6 percent. Other diverse neighborhoods include West Ridge, the Near West Side, Bridgeport, and Hyde Park.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Monolithic Atlantic cover story focuses on West Side and makes case for reparations</p></blockquote>
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<p>It doesn’t take a long time to see that Chicago’s most homogenous neighborhoods are predominantly black.</p><p>[iframe src=”http://cf.datawrapper.de/R8nn4/3/” frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” webkitallowfullscreen=”webkitallowfullscreen” mozallowfullscreen=”mozallowfullscreen” oallowfullscreen=”oallowfullscreen” msallowfullscreen=”msallowfullscreen” width=”100%” height=”500″]</p><p>There are 20 neighborhoods in Chicago where African Americans make up more than 90 percent of the population. There are no neighborhoods where Asians are that share of the population, and only one where Latinos and whites are.</p><p>How do these 20 predominantly African-American communities compare to the rest of Chicago on poverty, educational attainment, and crime? </p><p>[iframe src=”http://cf.datawrapper.de/qxvph/3/” frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” webkitallowfullscreen=”webkitallowfullscreen” mozallowfullscreen=”mozallowfullscreen” oallowfullscreen=”oallowfullscreen” msallowfullscreen=”msallowfullscreen” width=”100%” height=”500″]</p><p>There are 20 neighborhoods in Chicago where African Americans make up more than 90 percent of the population. There are no neighborhoods where Asians are that share of the population, and only one where Latinos are and one where whites are.</p><p>“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts,” Coates concludes in his piece in The Atlantic, “America will never be whole.”</p><p>The same could easily be said of Chicago.</p><p><a class="Link" href="https://github.com/scarlettswerdlow/diversity" target="_blank" >Get the data and code used in this analysis.</a><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2015/1/26/18612331/how-segregated-is-chicago-and-does-it-mattersswerdlow2014-06-25T13:52:42-05:002019-05-11T08:16:19-05:00Illinois' flat income tax places it in the 'Terrible Ten' - Chicago
<p>Illinois is one of the ten most regressive states in the country, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan <a class="Link" href="http://www.itep.org/whopays/" target="_blank" >Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy</a>. A state is regressive if it requires the poor to pay a greater share of their income in taxes than the rich. In Illinois, the state’s poorest residents—those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale—pay almost three times as much of their earnings in taxes as the top one percent do.</p><p>Illinois’ flat income tax is one of the primary reasons ITEP ranks the state as the fourth most regressive. A flat income tax means the state takes the same percentage of income from everyone, regardless of how much or how little they earn.</p><p>Illinois is one of only ten states with a flat tax rate. There are seven states that collect no taxes on individual income. See which states have flat, graduated, or no income taxes in the map below.</p><p>Illinois increased the tax rate on individual income from 3 percent to 5 percent in 2011. That increase is set to expire January 1, 2015. Speaker Michael Madigan <a class="Link" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/madigan-finds-dismal-support-among-house-dems-tax-extension/wed-05212014-920pm" target="_blank" >reports</a> that the House Democratic caucus is almost 30 votes shy of the 60 needed to make what was a temporary increase permanent.</p><p>If Illinois fails to extend the tax rate of 5 percent, it will have the third lowest individual income tax rate of any state with a flat tax. According to the <a class="Link" href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-individual-income-tax-rates" target="_blank" >Tax Foundation</a>, only Indiana and Pennsylvania will have lower rates, at 3.4 and 3.07 percent respectively.</p><p>Illinois depends on individual income taxes for 42 percent of its tax revenue, according to the <a class="Link" href="http://factfinder2.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/STC/2013/STC003/0400000US17" target="_blank" >U.S. Census Bureau</a>. Taxes on individual income bring in more money for the state than any other tax. This wasn’t the case in 2009, when half of the state’s tax revenue came from sales tax. Sales tax revenue has steadily declined since then, though, due to the Great Recession.</p><p> <br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2014/6/25/18576506/illinois-flat-income-tax-places-it-in-the-terrible-tensswerdlow2014-06-25T13:50:40-05:002019-05-11T10:07:53-05:00Map: See what your community is calling 311 about - Chicago
<p>265,088. That’s how many requests Chicagoans made to 311 in the first five months of this year. Where are you most likely to come face-to-face with vermin? Who talks the most (about) trash? Whose lights are out the most, and who complains the most about potholes? We analyzed all 265,088 requests to settle these important questions once and for all.</p><p>See what your community is calling about in our interactive map below. But first, the “winners.”</p><p><b>Loud and proud:</b> We assume all <b>Archer Heights</b> homes have a direct line to 311. With 2,831 service requests, residents of this mostly middle-class neighborhood made the most per capita requests to 311 of any Chicago community. You say high maintenance. We say civically engaged.</p><p><b>(Pot)hole in one:</b> With the winter we had, it’s no surprise Chicagoans lodged more complaints about potholes than anything else. With more than 800 requests per 1,000 residents, South Side community <b>Burnside</b> crushed the competition for the dubious distinction of the highest pothole-to-person ratio of any Chicago community.</p><p><b>Tag along: </b>Too bad City Hall cut graffiti blasting from the budget. Chicagoans contacted the city 62,261 times to complain about tagging—second only to potholes—with <b>Archer Heights</b> boasting the highest rate of complaints.</p><p><b>Rat race:</b> Be on the lookout for vermin next time you’re in <b>North Center</b>—bounded by Addison on the south, Montrose on the north, the Chicago River on the west and Ravenswood on the east. Residents here made more 311 requests about these critters than any other Chicago community per capita.</p><p><b>Trash talker: </b>Watch where you step in<b> Lincoln Park</b>. Residents of this affluent North Side neighborhood rang 311 more than 500 times—more per capita requests than any other neighborhood—to complain about trash on their lawns and sidewalks.</p><p><b>Lights out:</b> With over 400 requests per 10,000 residents, <b>Calumet Heights</b> takes the prize for the most 311 complaints about street and alley lights out. Don’t forget your flashlight next time you travel to this South Side community.</p><p><b>Tree hugger: </b>Call in the arbor guards to <b>West Pullman</b>, where residents made more per capita requests to 311 about tree debris and tree trims than any other Chicago community.</p><p><b>Abandon home, all ye who enter here: </b>The city recorded 290 complaints about abandoned buildings blighting <b>West Englewood</b>. Nearby, <b>West Elsdon</b> residents reported 174 abandoned vehicles to the city. These communities have the highest request rates for abandoned buildings and vehicles respectively in Chicago.</p><p>See what your community is contacting 311 about in this interactive map. Communities are shaded by their request rates: communities with the lightest shades made the fewest 311 per capita requests; those with the darkest shades made the most per capita requests.</p><p><small><i>Get the </i></small><a class="Link" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CUdgcylLxVYd3Ff32lws4w3QF88YoOyW2lhTk3UY_Jw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" ><small><i>data</i></small></a><small><i> used in this analysis.</i></small><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2014/6/25/18597783/map-see-what-your-community-is-calling-311-aboutsswerdlow2014-06-13T07:00:02-05:002019-05-09T09:57:40-05:00Interactive map: Illinois late to adopt income tax - Chicago
<p>Illinois adopted its individual income tax in 1969—more than 50 years after the federal government started to tax wages and 30 years after the typical state.</p><p>See when each state adopted its individual income tax in this interactive map:</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Illinois’ flat income tax places it in the ‘Terrible Ten’</p></blockquote>
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<p>According to the <a class="Link" href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/when-did-your-state-adopt-its-income-tax" target="_blank" >Tax Foundation</a>, which assembled the data, the 1930s saw the greatest adoption of the individual income tax as a stopgap against the drop in property tax revenue during the Great Depression.</p><p>Only three states—Hawaii, Wisconsin, and Mississippi—adopted an individual income tax before the federal government. Seven states today still do not have an individual income tax.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2014/6/13/18543900/interactive-map-illinois-late-to-adopt-income-taxsswerdlow2014-06-01T19:25:56-05:002019-05-11T08:18:13-05:00How big are the savings from the state’s pension overhaul? - Chicago
<p>Big changes to four of Illinois’ five retirement systems were to take effect June 1, but they are on hold until the court can rule on their constitutionality.</p><p>The changes—including increases in the retirement age, caps on pensionable salary, and cuts to cost-of-living adjustments—are supposed to help Illinois make whole its $100 billion in pension debt. They are part of Senate Bill 1, now <a class="Link" href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/98/PDF/098-0599.pdf" target="_blank" >Public Act 98-0599</a>, passed by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by Governor Pat Quinn in December 2013.</p><p>If implemented, Senate Bill 1 would save the state $23.7 billion in fiscal year 2015, says the <a class="Link" href="http://cgfa.ilga.gov/Upload/FinCondILStateRetirementSysFY13Mar2014.pdf" target="_blank" >Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability</a>. That would lighten Illinois’ load by 25 percent, but the state would still be responsible for $78.9 billion in pension debt. Senate Bill 1 includes a schedule to fully fund the state’s retirement systems by 2045.</p><p>In the infographic below, explore how much money Illinois would save—and how much money it will still owe—if the pension overhaul passes constitutional muster.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Judge halts Illinois pension overhaul</p></blockquote>
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<p>Unions are challenging the changes in court, arguing that they violate the state Constitution. Article XIII of the constitution protects pensions from being unilaterally diminished or impaired by the state. The state says the overhaul is justified “in light of the magnitude of the pension problem.”<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2014/6/1/18576843/how-big-are-the-savings-from-the-state-s-pension-overhaulsswerdlow2014-05-27T10:12:10-05:002019-05-11T08:51:44-05:00How segregated is Chicago, and does it matter? - Chicago
<p>In a provocative piece sweeping the Internet, <a class="Link" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" target="_blank" >The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations</a>. His central piece of evidence: Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, where nine out of ten residents are black, 43 percent of people live in poverty, and the homicide rate is three times the rate of the city as a whole.</p><p>Confronted by these facts, Coates claims, “Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city.”</p><p>Is Coates right? Is Chicago so segregated that blacks and whites essentially live in different cities?</p><p>We constructed a segregation score for each Chicago community area by looking at the fraction of the population that blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians account for. A score of zero means a neighborhood’s residents are all of the same race. Neighborhoods with scores closer to 100 are more diverse. In Chicago, the highest possible score is 80. See each community’s score in the map below.</p><p>By this measure, Rogers Park is Chicago’s most diverse community area. Whites make up 39 percent of the population, blacks 26 percent, Latinos 24 percent, and Asians 6 percent. Other diverse neighborhoods include West Ridge, the Near West Side, Bridgeport, and Hyde Park.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Considering Chicago and ‘The Case for Reparations’ Monolithic Atlantic cover story focuses on West Side and makes case for reparations Disparities in pot arrests reveal two Chicagos</p></blockquote>
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<p>It doesn’t take a long time to see that Chicago’s most homogenous neighborhoods are predominantly black.</p><p>There are 20 neighborhoods in Chicago where African Americans make up more than 90 percent of the population. There are no neighborhoods where whites, Latinos, or Asians are that share of the population.</p><p>How do these 20 communities compare to the rest of Chicago on poverty, educational attainment, and crime?</p><p>The data do not tell us if segregation is the cause of these disparities, or a symptom of underlying social ills. What we do know is Chicago is still a segregated city, and its story is one of two cities. In Chicago’s most segregated communities, one third of people live in poverty, half as many people complete college, and the crime rate is twice that of the rest of the city.</p><p>“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts,” Coates concludes in his piece in The Atlantic, “America will never be whole.”</p><p>The same could easily be said of Chicago.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2014/5/27/18583435/how-segregated-is-chicago-and-does-it-mattersswerdlow2014-05-27T08:05:25-05:002019-05-11T08:14:17-05:00Interactive map: Illinois veterans - Chicago
<p>There are more than 750,000 veterans in Illinois, making up 7.8 percent of the population according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Cook County is home to the smallest share of veterans in the state. Veterans are 15 percent of the population in downstate St. Clair County—making it the most densely vet-populated county in Illinois. See where veterans live in Illinois in the interactive map below.</p><p>More than a third of Illinois veterans are from the Vietnam era. The Census data is for the civilian population, suggesting that the share of vets from the second Gulf War will increase as more retire from active duty.</p><p>Although a smaller share of Illinois veterans have a bachelors degree compared to their non-serving counterparts, household income is higher on average for vets: $37,546 compared to $27,987. The unemployment rate is similar for vets and non-vets, but in both cases, higher than the national average.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2014/5/27/18576125/interactive-map-illinois-veteranssswerdlow2014-05-23T04:49:36-05:002019-05-11T08:33:15-05:00Can math save Illinois from gerrymandering? - Chicago
<p>Thanks to a mathematician, we have a glimpse into what Illinois could look like without gerrymandering. Warren Smith, a PhD and co-founder of the Center for Range Voting, made a map of Illinois’ congressional districts completely free of political influence.</p><p>Compare his map on the left to our current one on the right:</p><p>A campaign is underway in Illinois, led by <a class="Link" href="http://independentmaps.org/" target="_blank" >Yes! for Independent Maps</a>, to take redistricting out of the hands of the General Assembly.</p><p>Earlier this month, Yes! activists <a class="Link" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/half-million-voters-seek-end-legislative-gerrymandering/fri-05022014-728am" target="_blank" >submitted</a> 532,000 signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections in support of an initiative that would establish an independent commission of citizens to set the state’s legislative districts. The commission would draw the boundaries that define the state House and state Senate districts, but not the congressional districts. Lobbyists, public officials, and anyone with a conflict of interest would be excluded from the commission.</p><p>Whether the initiative will be on the ballot in November is uncertain. A close ally of Speaker Michael Madigan has <a class="Link" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/lawsuit-madigan-pal-aimed-term-limit-redistricting-efforts/wed-04302014-645pm" target="_blank" >filed</a> a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the initiative.</p><p>Smith drew the <a class="Link" href="http://rangevoting.org/RangeVoting.html" target="_blank" >Center for Range Voting</a>’s map using the “shortest splitline algorithm.” To start, he draws the shortest possible line that cuts the state into two halves with roughly equal populations. He keeps cutting the halves into halves using the same technique until he has the correct number of districts. In Illinois’ case, that’s 18.</p><p>If successful, the Yes! campaign would not necessarily use this or any similar algorithm to draw the state districts. That is one of the reasons Smith is skeptical of independent commissions to draw districts. “About various initiatives in various states at various times to save us from gerrymandering, it is important to realize that most of them, historically, have been bullshit packaged to look like chocolate pudding,” Smith said. “What is real is actual mathematical criteria. The algorithm is designed with exactly that goal in mind. Very simple. Totally unique. Totally unbudgeable by any congressman.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>RELATED: Lawsuit by Madigan pal aimed at term limit, redistricting efforts</p></blockquote>
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https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2014/5/23/18579727/can-math-save-illinois-from-gerrymanderingsswerdlow