IL To Lose 1 House Seat After 2020 Census Apportionment

ILLINOIS — The Prairie State is set to lose a seat in Congress, falling from 18 to 17, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday afternoon. According to the federal tally, the population of Illinois was 12,812,508 in 2020 — about 18,000 people less than a decade ago.

The results of 2020's Constitutionally mandated 10-year census will serve as the basis of each state's representation in Congress. The numbers will shape politics over the next decade as 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are divvied up through a process called apportionment.

Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo thanked the Bureau's dedicated civil servants who completed their jobs during the "unprecedented challenges" of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes and civil unrest.

She also thanked everyone who responded to the census for taking the time to participate in democracy.

Raimondo said she transmitted the 2020 census population and apportionment counts to the president on Monday and assured him they were complete and accurate — despite the last administration winning a Supreme Court battle to stop the census count early.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a dissenting opinion in that case, said in October that "meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying," and some critics say the early cutoff along with the challenges of the pandemic may have led to an undercount, especially of immigrant and minority communities.

The Bureau promised to release more granular, block-by-block demographic data by Sept. 30.

According to the 2020 census, there are 331,449,281 people living in the United States, about 7.4 percent more than during the 2010 census — the second-slowest growth rate in U.S. history and only a tenth of a percentage point higher than that seen between 1930 and 1940.

Six states will gain seats in Congress, while seven will lose seats. Officials said the difference between keeping or losing a seat was as small as 89 people in the case of New York.

States gaining seats in Congress:

• Texas (2)
• Colorado (1)
• Florida (1)
• Montana (1)
• North Carolina (1)
• Oregon (1)

States losing seats:

• California (-1)
• Illinois (-1)
• Michigan (-1)
• New York (-1)
• Ohio (-1)
• Pennsylvania (-1)
• West Virginia (-1)

The South grew the fastest of any U.S. region at 10.2 percent, while the Midwest grew the slowest at 3.1 percent. Illinois was one of only three states to lose population over the last decade, with more people moving out of the state than moving in, census officials said.

"Unfortunately, this has been happening for more than a decade, that we've had an out-migration from the state," Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday morning, ahead of the official announcement.

"I looked very closely at the numbers of people, who they are, where they come from, why they're leaving, and what you see when you look at the out-migration is, actually, the largest portion of the population that was moving out were young people who were choosing to go to college out of state because they couldn't afford to go to college in Illinois. We weren't making it affordable enough."

Pritzker said the state's best students were being offered full scholarships out of state and that his administration has increased scholarship funding to make the state more competitive.

"Just when that was starting to take effect, COVID hit," the governor said.

Pritzker said drawing up a redistricting map would be the job of the legislature and didn't venture a prediction about how the process would play out.

He has previously called for "an independent method of drawing the districts, so that it's always going to be competitive," going so far as promising to veto any plan that was drafted by legislators rather than an independent commission.

Several efforts to change the state's redistricting process at the ballot box have failed. A 2016 ballot initiative would have created an 11-member redistricting commission, with some members appointed by lawmakers and others drawn from a random pool of registered voters. But the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the measure unconstitutional, and it was struck from the ballot.

Barring a new, last-minute compromise, Democrats in the General Assembly will take a shot at drawing a new map under the general legislative process.

If Democrats can't find a majority — or if Pritzker follows through on threats to veto the party's map — lawmakers will appoint a bipartisan commission with the tie-breaking vote to determine which party will control the redistricting process selected by drawing a legislator's name out of a hat —typically a stovepipe hat.

The framers of the state constitution hoped legislators would compromise rather take such a risk, but they apparently didn't count on a legislature full of gamblers.

Lawmakers have taken the bet about half the time since 1970.