With less than two weeks before the end of the legislative session,  members of the Illinois House Republican caucus and the public in general wait to get answers from Illinois Democrats as to what data they are using during the redistricting process.  

Wednesday on the House floor, the Republican spokesperson of the House redistricting committee, Rep. Tim Butler of Springfield, once again rose to ask Democrat leaders for the answer and once again got the “we’ll get back to you on that” response.  That prompted Rep. Butler to say he has heard that response time and time again. 

Republicans accuse the Democrats of rushing the process so they can maintain control and predict Democrats will use data from the American Community Survey (ACS) – a survey performed by the U.S. Census Bureau that’s done on a significantly smaller scale than the once-every-decade census. They say that as long as those across the aisle want to use the ACS as a point for drawing the map, this is not a fair map.   ACS data is simply an estimate and there should be no rush using this estimated data from the ACS.

The constitution’s drop-date is Oct. 5 for the map-making work to be completed.