Evanston City Council approved a map over Winter Break that will reshape Evanston’s nine wards as of Aug. 1, ending months of public debate and resident forums.
Aldermen approved the map at the Dec. 15 City Council meeting. The council had planned to vote Nov. 24, but Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) asked for an extension to draft changes that would keep traditional neighborhoods together in her ward. This map was a slight variation of the one chosen by the Rules Committee early in November.
Public discussion began last June, as the city must equalize ward populations before municipal elections in April 2005. U.S. Census information from 2000 indicated that ward populations were uneven, but minority and student groups quickly spoke up to ensure that redistricting would not diminish their voting power.
Submitted by Ald. Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd), the final map sought to address many of the issues discussed throughout the redistricting debates — maintaining two black majority-minority wards in the Second and Fifth wards and not splitting the on-campus Northwestern student vote among three wards.
Leaders from Associated Student Government and the Evanston/North Shore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took issue with early maps proposed by Ald. Arthur Newman (1st). NAACP leaders cited the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a mandate for majority-minority representation in two wards.
The NAACP tried to achieve those goals by drawing maps based on the total population of wards instead of the number of residents older than 18, which was used in most of the previous maps. The final map is based on total population.
“We had two issues, one being to use a total population basis for creating a map and the second was to have two majority-minority wards,” said George Mitchell, president of the local NAACP. “From my perspective, those objectives were met. Whether that was the best map, I don’t know, but it was a map that got the votes.”
Jane Lee, ASG’s external relations chairwoman, also submitted maps on behalf of students. Though her map was not adopted, the on-campus student vote will remain in the First and Seventh wards. The resulting map will shift more than 550 NU students into the Seventh Ward, the ward that will change the most.
Lee said the student participation in the redistricting process has made the students a more credible interest to the city.
“Our relationship has improved not only with those on the city council, but there are a lot of partnerships now going on with other organizations like the NAACP,” said Lee, a Weinberg junior. “I really think some of these partnerships will continue in the years to come.”
Newman said the map was a compromise for everyone involved in the process. Though he wasn’t particularly pleased with the map, he said redistricting was unavoidable.
“There were students that left the ward, there were longtime residents that left the ward,” he said. “It’s something that has to be done every ten years, and we dealt with it.”
Newman said he thought Ald. Edmund Moran (6th), the only alderman who voted against the map, did it out of dislike for other members of the council.
“Alderman Moran has no credibility,” Newman said. “(He) has been completely isolated on the city council … Moran made no constructive suggestions.”
Moran argued that the proposed maps were unfair to students. He said although students are not a protected class under the Voting Rights Act, they still fall under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Though students remain in the First and Seventh wards, Moran said the traditional student voting bloc in the First Ward no longer exists.
“When you’re shuffling them around you’re still dividing a community of interest,” he said. “The plain fact of the matter is you’re dividing a community of interest, particularly when members have traditionally resided in one electoral district.”
