In Illinois, minorities underrepresented in the Legislature

CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois has never had an Asian-American lawmaker in its state Legislature, but Theresa Mah is on the verge of changing that.

The former history professor is running unopposed as a Democrat this November for state House District 2, a seat in southwest Chicago that includes Chinatown.

"It's pretty exciting to go from teaching history to making history," said Mah, 48, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants.

Mah's candidacy represents a political breakthrough in Illinois, but also highlights how whites still hold disproportionally large majorities in state legislatures and Congress despite minorities comprising a growing portion of the U.S. population.

In Illinois, Asians make up 5 percent of the population, but with no representative in the legislature, the state ranks fourth in the country for Asian underrepresentation, according to an analysis of demographic data by The Associated Press.

Whites comprise 62.2 percent of Illinois' population but hold nearly three-fourths of the 177 seats in the state Legislature. Just over 7 percent of the Legislature is Hispanic, even though Latinos make up nearly 17 percent of the state's population.

Illinois also has two of the top five state House districts in the U.S. with Hispanic majorities but white representatives. Chicago Democratic Rep. Daniel Burke's district, which ranks fourth in that category, has a Hispanic population of 75 percent. In House Speaker Michael Madigan's Chicago district, which ranks fifth, Hispanics make up 68 percent of it.

The AP analyzed the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Congress and the National Conference of State Legislatures to determine the extent to which the nation's thousands of lawmakers match the demographics of its hundreds of millions of residents. The result: Non-Hispanic whites make up a little over 60 percent of the U.S. population, but still hold more than 80 percent of all congressional and state legislative seats.

In 2011, Illinois passed a voting rights act that, among other things, requires legislative districts to be drawn in a way that allows minorities to influence elections. The law imposed requirements in addition to those outlined in federal Voting Rights Act, which mandates that legislative districts be drawn taking minority populations into account.

But several factors have contributed to the underrepresentation of Hispanics and Asians in state legislatures throughout the state and the U.S., including low naturalization rates which prevent them voting, said Rob Paral, a Chicago-area demographer. In addition to that, he said some are in the country illegally while others who are U.S. citizens are simply too young to vote or don't participate.

"It's like a baseball game where instead of having nine players on the field, you have five or six players," Paral said.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the speaker's district, which he has held for four decades, has always been a diverse mix of Italian, Irish and Polish residents before growing into a majority Hispanic district.

"It's always required people to pay close attention to the needs of the community," he said.