Voters To Get First Look At Draft Of 4-District Skokie Electoral Map

SKOKIE, IL — Village residents are set to get a first look at a draft of a new electoral map ahead of an upcoming community meeting.

The new map will divide Skokie into quadrants, which residents of each of those four districts electing one trustees starting with the April 2025 elections.

Two other trustees will be elected at-large, with the votes of residents all over town, as is the current practice for the entire board.

Village officials are implementing a new map as part of a trio of binding electoral reforms approved by voters last November following citizen-initiated referendums.

In February, village staff issued a request for qualifications for legal services to help implement the referendums in accordance with state law. And in June, the board approved the hiring of law firm Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins and mapping consultant Peter Creticos, president and executive director of the Institute for Work and the Economy.

The first public meeting to discuss the consultants' work was held Aug. 14 at the Skokie Public Library.

"The mayor and village board want this to be a process that is completed professionally and above-board and encouraged information sessions with the public," Village Manager John Lockerby said at the meeting.

Jason Guisinger, a partner at Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins, explained the state and federal legal requirements for drawing up a new voting map.

Based on the village's 2020 U.S. Census numbers and the principle of "one-person, one-vote" that requires districts to be within 10 percent population differential, Guisinger said each of the four new districts must contain between 16,108 and 17,804 residents.

Federal law forbids anything that has a discriminatory result on protected populations, which include Black and Latino residents of Skokie. That includes splitting members of either group apart, so-called "fracturing," or making sure all of them are in a particular area, known as "packing."

"So those are two things that cannot be done," Guisinger said, "that the law absolutely prohibits when drawing legislative maps."

---

At the Aug. 14 meeting, several residents suggested providing the public an opportunity to look at a few different draft maps, with each balancing the various factors being considered by the consultants.

But Creticos said it was preferable to present a single proposed map and solicit feedback for potential improvements

"My experience has been, conversations are most productive when you're presented with an action and the logic and framework behind it, then go forward in terms of how you then make a change," Creticos said.

"That's probably the more constructive way to do it," he said. "Options are not all equal."

According to village staff, a proposed map and implementation plan is expected to be presented to the village board in November with a final version approved for adoption in December — more than a year after the referendum to approve hybrid elections passed with 9,743 votes in favor and 8,537 against.

The other two referendums to shift the village to nonpartisan and staggered elections — eliminating party labels from the ballot and voting for different trustees every two years, instead of voting for the entire village board with the mayor and clerk every four years.

Mayor George Van Dusen and the Skokie Caucus Party, which has ruled the village for decades, opposed all three referendums. The electoral changes were backed by a citizen group called Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform that introduced the referendum proposals to the public shortly after the village board's controversial vote to approve plans for a Carvana tower.

The draft of the new map is due to be released Sept. 7, ahead of a second community meeting at the Skokie Public Library, 5215 Oakton St., at 7 p.m. on Sept. 11.