As post time approaches for an eight-furlong run at Fairmount Park Race Track, the thoroughbreds move from the barns, which happen to be in the 12th Congressional District, to the starting gates, which are in the 15th.

The bell rings, the gates open, and the horses charge through the first and second turns, re-entering the 12th District about the midpoint of the third turn before thundering down the home stretch and back into the 15th to the finish line.

You don't have to pay admission if you catch the action with binoculars from the nearby overpass that carries Interstate 255 over I-55-70. It's in the 13th District, by the way.

Horses don't vote, even though this is Illinois. But the people who do vote in my hometown of Collinsville are divided in what might seem absurd ways by the redistricting that took hold with this year's campaign for the March 20 primary.

Drive east from that racetrack up St. Louis Road until you reach Sycamore Street. Old-timers remember it as near the long-gone Carroll's tavern, which served a couple of generations of Kahoks.

At this point, you are in the 15th District, but the houses on the left side of the street are in the 13th. Go right on Moffett Avenue, and after about a dozen houses you are in the 12th. Yep, you can drive across that piece of the 15th — from the 13th to the 12th — in less than 30 seconds.

If representation in Washington means power, maybe Collinsville, with about 26,000 people, will be clout city. It will have three congressmen, while its neighbors in St. Louis, with about 320,000, must get by with just one.

What happened to the old principle of one man, one vote? Well, nothing. Each congressional district still has approximately the same number of people. But these Illinois boundaries reach wide to achieve it and then converge, well, guess where.

Take that 15th District. Its northeast corner is on the Indiana border, north of Danville, with the boundary dribbling down the Wabash River to the Ohio River, then west before soaring northward from Metropolis until cranking west and slimming into a dagger plunged westward through the middle of Collinsville.

It ends just beyond the home of U.S. Rep. John Shimkus. The apparent purpose is to provide a thread of land linking his address in the Democratic stronghold of Metro East to the fan-like expanse of Republicans to the east, whose votes have put him in the U.S. House eight times.

But while Shimkus appears to benefit, Democrats were in charge of this process and presumably drew these ridiculous boundaries as part of a grander plan for political advantage. Republicans said as much in the court challenge that is typically filed by whichever party is on the outs when the post-census redistricting comes along every 10th year.

Last month, a federal court panel agreed that the map was "a blatant political move to increase the number of Democratic congressional seats" but rejected the challenge as lacking "a workable standard" against which to measure.

Critics complained that the map forced Republican incumbents to face each other in some districts, but Democrats with the pens actually gave Shimkus a pass. They missed by less than a mile the chance to force him to run against Rep. Timothy Johnson, R-Champaign. Johnson represents that 13th District, which drops like a blunt-ended stalactite from the north into the western reaches of Collinsville.

Shimkus' home is similarly close to the 12th, a territory largely unfamiliar to him, where Democrat Jerry Costello chose not to seek re-election.

No matter who benefits, it seems absurd to have boundaries that look like they were drawn by somebody while riding a barrel over Niagara Falls.

It flouts the Illinois Constitution, which says that districts must be "compact" and "contiguous." Such a concept is impossible to visualize on Illinois congressional maps, but it can be easily recognized in a diagram of straight-sided Iowa districts that was submitted to legislators there by an independent commission.

Complaints abound, but any significant change faces a certain battle against Illinois politicians who are always bent on partisan advantage. Reformers can only hope that the next time mapmakers focus on Fairmount Park, the load they bring back is of horse sense.