Peoria Standard

In a March 24 Facebook post, Rep. Ryan Spain shared his thoughts on gerrymandering.

"Voters should pick their politicians; politicians should not pick their voters. I once again spoke out against gerrymandering on the House Floor last night," said Spain.

Spain shared a link to a video of him speaking in the House on March 23. His speech is below: “Here we are again on the topic of gerrymandering. One of the most important, and unfortunate topics, in the state of Illinois. What we know is that gerrymandering is a best practice by the majority party here in the State of Illinois and I would certainly be interested in working with the sponsor on this issue, but I can't stand by and be supportive of the selective solutions to gerrymandering in this example, for the purposes of counting populations where locations of incarceration exist, but not addressing the fundamental issue that is destroying our ability to deliver effective cooperative bipartisan solutions in the state of Illinois and in other places in the country. We need to put an end to gerrymandering in all states, but I would remind you and even heralded institutions like the Washington Post - certainly not known for being a conservative- organizations have pointed out that gerrymandering by the Democrats in control of this state is at a master class level, done more aggressively and more partisanly than any other place in the country I encourage a no vote.”

Prison gerrymandering, or the practice of counting incarcerated individuals in the county where they are incarcerated even though they cannot vote, is not a new topic. NPR has covered the topic as recently as 2019. NPR wrote, "That's because, since the first U.S. census in 1790, the federal government has included incarcerated people in the population counts of where they're imprisoned. This technical detail of a little-known policy can have an outsized impact on prison towns across the U.S. for the next decade."

In 2021, NPR wrote about the topic again, noting that 11 states are trying to block the practice. Those states are Washington, California, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. In Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, only state legislative districts are affected by the prison gerrymandering bans. In the other states, both federal and state districts are affected.

Ryan Spain has represented the people of the 73rd District since 2017. Before he served in the state legislature, Spain was, in 2017, elected to the Peoria City Council as the youngest at-large member in Peoria history, a seat he held until the Fall of 2016. He is currently employed at OSF Healthcare System as the Vice President of Economic Development.