The U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday Illinois will lose a seat in Congress based on the results of the 2020 census.
Illinois will move from 18 to 17 seats in the U.S. House, an expected result after some advocates had warned that an undercount could lead to the loss of two seats. The state has lost at least one congressional representative in eight of the last nine decades after peaking at 27 seats in 1910 and remaining there until the 1940 census.
Six other states will also lose a seat, including California, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York.
Illinois, Mississippi and West Virginia are the only three states to lose population over the past decade, Census Bureau officials said Monday. It’s the first time the Census Bureau logged a decade-over-decade population loss in the state.
According to data released Monday, the state has a total population of just over 12.8 million people, a drop of 0.1 percent when compared to 2010.
While the population loss was not as pronounced as some had originally anticipated, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in an unrelated news conference Monday that he was “concerned” about outmigration in the state, which he said has been taking place “for more than a decade.”
“We’ve got to turn that around,” Pritzker said. “That’s something that unfortunately before I became governor was a bit set in clay, if not stone. And now, we’re working very hard to make sure we’re going the right direction.”
Pritzker attributed the population loss primarily to college students who choose not to attend school in the state.
Under the state constitution, members of the General Assembly are tasked with drawing new legislative boundaries following the decennial census. The new legislative boundaries are then sent to the governor for approval or veto.
Census Bureau officials said that specific data used for redistricting would be provided by Sept. 30. The delay in official numbers could cause complications for Illinois’ redistricting process, which is currently underway.
Some Democratic state lawmakers have proposed using data from the American Community Survey in place of census data to create legislative and congressional district maps by the end of June as required by the constitution.
Republicans have repeatedly called for an independent, nonpartisan commission to draw new legislative boundaries without taking partisan politics into consideration, a proposal which has not been entertained by members of the state’s Democratic supermajorities in either chamber.
***Report Courtesy of TIM KIRSININKAS Capitol News Illinois on farmweeknow.com***
