Feb. 11--Late in his speech Wednesday to the Illinois General Assembly, President Barack Obama alluded to one of my favorite philosophical principles when he raised the subject of laws that govern voting and political mapmaking.
"If we were setting up a set of rules ahead of time, and you didn't know where you stood, which party you're going to be in ... you'd set up a system that was fair," he said. "That's how it should work."
The idea is that self-interest makes it hard for a person to judge what's objectively fair. So the best way is for him to pretend he doesn't know what his self-interest is -- to place himself behind what Harvard philosopher John Rawls called "the veil of ignorance."
The person who performs this thought experiment must suppose that he doesn't know "his place in society, his class position or social status," Rawls wrote in his noted 1971 book "A Theory of Justice." "Nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like."
It's generally a big challenge to think abstractly enough to craft a set of laws and moral principles that you could accept whether tomorrow you woke up rich or poor, black or white, male or female, healthy or sickly, Republican or Democrat and so on.
But it shouldn't be much of a challenge for Illinois Democrats now staunchly resisting efforts to take partisanship out of the political mapmaking process.
They truly are ignorant. We all are. No need to pretend.
None of us knows what the lay of the land will be in 2021, when the state must create new legislative districts based on results of the 2020 census. If the old procedure is still in place, Democrats might still control the process as they have since 2001, and be able to draw maps to maximize their advantage for another 10 years. Or Republicans might have taken back control for a decade, as they did in 1991.
A quick refresher on how it works. The 1970 Illinois Constitution says the General Assembly must pass and the governor must sign the new political map. If the chambers can't agree or can't override the governor's veto, the task is delegated to an eight-member panel that's evenly split by party membership. And if that panel is stalemated, the Illinois secretary of state must select by random draw a ninth member from one party or the other to break the tie.
The framers imagined that the prospect of such an important matter being left to chance would be so frightening and distasteful that it would inspire compromise. Ever since, history has howled with derisive laughter.
As part of his "turnaround agenda," Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner wants to change this weird process by amending the constitution to put legislative mapmaking under the control of a nonpartisan commission.
He, too, is ignorant.
If he's re-elected or another Republican governor takes his place in 2018, or if Republicans take back the Senate or the House over the course of the next three statewide elections, we're almost certain to go to the tie-breaking draw in which the GOP will have a 50 percent chance of getting control of the map and the opportunity to exact sweet revenge. In the unlikely event that Republicans control the governorship and both chambers in 2021, the chance they'll control the map goes up to 100 percent.
I could argue that researchers have found no connection between nonpartisan political maps and better, more economically favorable state governance. I could argue that it's cruel madness for Rauner to hold up 2016 budget negotiations and inflict real pain on the disadvantaged for a proposal that couldn't take effect until the 2022 election season.
But instead I'll argue that Rawlsian justice, as well as pure prudence, demands that the Democrats come out from behind their veil of actual ignorance and support the change.
It's popular -- polls show strong majorities support independent mapmaking.
It looks almost inevitable -- Fair Maps, a bipartisan coalition, has already collected 200,000 more petition signatures than are needed by a May deadline to put the amendment on the November ballot.
It's a concession to offer Rauner. It's a hedge against the very real chance that the Republicans will get to draw the map for the '20s.
And, not that this usually matters in bare-knuckle politics, it's the right thing to do.
