A $2 million precinct consolidation plan tied to redistricting that eliminated 779 of Chicago’s 2,069 precincts was denounced Thursday as “voter suppression.”
Mayoral challenger Willie Wilson has asked a federal judge to block the plan, which he said “reminds me of the Jim Crow days down South where I’m from,” when people were denied the right to vote and fought and died to secure it.
That’s even though the Chicago Board of Elections was legally required to consolidate precincts after new ward and district lines were drawn to coincide based on the 2020 Census.
On Thursday, a handful of Chicago alderpersons joined the chorus, with Election Board Executive Director Charles Holiday Jr., general counsel Adam Lasker and the rest of their team front-and-center at City Council budget hearings.
West Side Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) demanded to know why “one particular ward was able to maintain 40 precincts while the rest of us were reduced down to the 20’s,” and state law required each precinct to have “as close to 1,800 residents” as possible.
“Folks are beginning to want to sue because they believe it’s voter suppression,” Taliaferro said.
Lasker said “many variables” went into precinct consolidation.
One was ward population. Another was “size of the precincts prior to redistricting,” he said.
“The precincts initially were drawn by a computer using an algorithm that tries to not cross railroad tracks, tries to center around senior homes. ... So, there’s many, many different factors that go into the way the map has come out,” Lasker said. “It’s not a complete process yet.”
Taliaferro said he finds it “very difficult to believe that, out of this entire city, the algorithms only point to one specific spot,” adding: “That is probably the most disingenuous response I’ve heard.”
Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) agreed consolidation “could kind of be seen as a suppression of voting” because the board is “taking a larger amount of people and putting ’em in a smaller number of voting sites,” he said.
“I don’t believe that’s the direction that any of us want to go,” Napolitano added.
“I went from 47 precincts to 31, I think it is. I just think that we’re gonna be cramming a lot of people [who] are gonna show up on Election Day and say, ‘There’s too many people. I’m not gonna vote,’” he said.
Election Board spokesperson Max Bever said many precincts saw “about 100 voters all day” during the June 28 primary, and the 22.8% turnout that day was “second-lowest recorded” in Chicago history.
“If there are 200, 300, even 400 voters going to precinct polling places, we are ready to meet those voters and will have better staffing because of precinct consolidation, with additional election judges,” Bever said.
South Side Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) focused on the impact on senior citizens.
“If this ain’t voter suppression, I don’t know what is. I have 20 senior buildings in my ward. I’ll have 23 in the remap. And the complaint I get all the time is they never received their absentee ballots,” she said.
She asked how that issue is being addressed with local members of Congress and the U.S. Postal Service, “because that’s a big problem. We already don’t get regular mail.”
Holiday said the board is doing everything it can “to make it possible for our seniors to vote,” but many polls once located in senior living facilities were kicked out during the pandemic.
“After the March 2020 election, we were told we could not use those senior facilities,” Holiday said.
Now, they can return — but only with explicit permission.
“We tried to put the polling place where it’s convenient for the seniors. But we can’t force our way in those. … A lot of those facilities have opened their doors for us to come back. And where the doors have been opened, we are back.”
Lasker also warned the state law allowing early voting sites to stay open on Election Day is due to expire Jan. 1, meaning they won’t be open for the next election, on Feb. 28.
“We encourage you to contact your state representatives, your state senators. Contact the governor,” Lasker said. “Ask for them to expand this. Make it permanent.”
