Video: John Oliver Shouts Out Illinois' 'Earmuff District' In Gerrymandering Episode
By Mae Rice in News on Apr 10, 2017 5:56PM
On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver, possibly the country's last sane man, hosted a segment on gerrymandering featuring some fable-level Illinois coverage. You can watch the full segment above. In it, Oliver calls gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing voting districts to create partisan advantage, "[o]ne of the few remaining types of science in which the Republican party currently believes"; he also makes a solid dick joke. I recommend it.
If you want to skip to the locally relevant bits, however, head to 10:40. Here, Oliver notes that Democrats can gerrymander with just as much vigor as Republicans, and he shows an incredible 2001 clip of Illinois state senator and Democrat Vince DeMuzio (since deceased, RIP), promising to draw district lines fairly... while barely suppressing laughter. It's a great on-camera moment.
Next, head to 13:00, where Oliver digs into why Illinois' fourth Congressional district—which contains parts of Chicago's Logan Square, Bridgeport, Humboldt Park, and Gage Park— is shaped like this:
Nicknamed the "earmuff district," it's often cited as an example of gerrymandering, and it does, inarguably, look weird. It's even weirder on the ground. The line connecting the two... muffs, for lack of a better word, is a stretch of non-residential road, lined with a lot of scrubby grass. Critics cite this strip, especially, as evidence someone gamed the system, here, which requires districts must be contiguous.
However, according to Oliver, the fourth is actually shaped this way for nonpartisan reasons. The "earmuff district" is largely Latino, and the space between the two muffs is largely African-American. Both districts vote Democratic, typically—they're separated to make sure they have representatives serving their interests.
"Not all weird-shaped districts are bad," Oliver concludes. Though also, based on that DeMuzio clip, not all Chicago districts are such nonpartisan efforts, either.
[H/T Reddit]