Champaign County Redistricting Commission Starts Over

A panel assigned with re-drawing County Board districts in Champaign County essentially starts from scratch Wednesday night.

The board Tuesday rejected the design known as '1E' on a party line vote. County Board Democrat Michael Richards, who also sits on the panel, says the map was the worst design in terms of compactness. He also said the design disenfranchises black voters.

The board also voted 20 to 7 to recommend that the redistricting commission suggest multiple maps for the county board to consider. Richards says it's hard to predict what the commission will do at this point. And he says politics is only one thing to consider.

"Even if you take the straight party numbers out of it, both of the parties are going to have different priorities for a map," said Richards. "It's quite possible that we could find a compromised map that everybody thinks is okay, but not necessarily."

Mahomet Republican Stephanie Holderfield contends that a higher number of maps could become confusing at some point, saying the criteria set by the county board is more important.

"Let's make it work where the voting body is pleased with how it operates," she said. "I think the goal of the redistricting commission is not to muddy the waters, but give clarification and clear the waters a little bit." Holderfield says the ideal map will provide the opporutunity for any single person who wants to run for elected office

Republican Alan Nudo says he agrees with a couple of concerns cited by Democrats Chris Alix and James Quisenberry, who wanted to be clear a final map include so-called 'majority minority' districts as required by law, that breaking up precincts would be the last thing considered, and that Urbana not have too many districts. He says having an agreement between parties is 'big.'

"This has the ability, I think, if we can make something happen here, it could roll out to other counties or even go statewide," said Nudo. "But let me put it very blunty - there are people who are interested in not having this happen. I hadn't realized the pressures that individuals are under from a party standpoint."

The Champaign County Board has to sign off on a re-drawn map of 11 districts by July.