Advocates for fair redistricting have been trying for a decade to take the job of drawing our state’s legislative maps away from politicians and assign it to an independent panel.
Try, try again
2010
The League of Women Voters sought to put an amendment on the 2012 ballot, but started late and pulled the plug early because it could not collect enough signatures before the deadline.
2014
The Yes for Independent Maps campaign was launched by a coalition of nonprofits and business leaders. More than 500,000 signatures were collected – with 298,000 valid signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot. But Illinois Democrats fought the measure before the state Board of Elections and in court. A Cook County Circuit Court judge agreed that the wording of the state constitution was too narrow to permit the amendment as drafted. The Illinois Supreme Court eventually upheld that ruling, striking the measure from the ballot.
2016
Applying the lessons of previous campaigns, the coalition tried again with the Independent Map Amendment. More than 560,000 signatures were submitted to the Board of Elections, which approved the petitions, but another legal challenge kept the measure off the ballot. Once again, a Cook County Circuit Court judge found that the wording ran afoul of the constitution, and the Illinois Supreme Court, voting 4-3 along party lines, again blocked the amendment from the ballot.
Since then, the coalition has lobbied state lawmakers to put an amendment on the ballot themselves. The constitutional barriers, real and imagined, that have doomed the voter-driven amendments do not apply to the General Assembly; all it would take is a three-fifths vote of both houses. The 2019 legislative session wrapped up without so much as a committee hearing for a proposed amendment, despite the support of dozens of sponsors.
A revised amendment, was filed in February; the ballot deadline was May 3. Lawmakers ran out the clock.
Public support is consistently strong. The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute polled on the subject seven times from 2010 to 2016, and again in 2019 and 2020. The most recent poll found 64 percent of voters favored an independent redistricting commission.
Everybody wants fair maps! (Well, almost everybody…)
Poll after poll after poll shows Illinois voters don’t want politicians drawing their own districts.
Paul Simon Public Policy Institute has frequently included questions about legislative redistricting reforms in its annual polls. Support for an independent redistricting commission has polled above 60 percent since 2011. In 2019, 67 percent of voters said they either favor or strongly favor such a change; 22 percent said they oppose or strongly oppose; and 11 percent said other/don’t know. This year, 64 percent said they are in favor; 22 percent oppose and 14 percent other/don’t know.
In 2009, Gov. Pat Quinn’s Illinois Reform Commission named redistricting reform among its top priorities.
Lawmakers (and wannabe lawmakers) regularly profess support for fair maps, especially at election time. At any given time, there are several proposed redistricting amendments awaiting action in Springfield, often with dozens of sponsors.
More than 560,000 people – almost twice the number required – signed petitions to get a fair map amendment on the ballot in 2016.
Don’t forget the army of volunteers who have circulated petitions. or donated to the cause. Civic leaders and good government groups, Republicans and Democrats have put their names and money behind the amendment.
Voters want this change. Politicians don’t
The 2020 U.S. Census, which will trigger the next round of redistricting, raised the stakes in the spring legislative session as advocates made an urgent last push.
Their proposal, known as the Fair Maps Amendment (HJRCA41/SJRCA18), would have created a diverse and independent panel charged with drawing maps that don’t favor any political party. It called for compact, contiguous districts, drawn to protect minority representation, preserve communities of interest and respect geographic and municipal boundaries. And it spelled out an open and transparent process, with public input before and after the maps were drawn.
The May 3 deadline to place it on the ballot came and went, killing the chance to amend the constitution in time to affect the new maps.
An earlier version of the amendment never got so much as a hearing in the 2019 legislative session. Supporters rounded up 37 Senate sponsors — enough to pass the measure, if it were called for a vote. But those endorsements can be misleading. Similar amendments are almost always teed up in both houses, loaded with sponsors (especially in an election year). Candidates for re-election invariably express support for redistricting reform. But the measures never go anywhere.
Illinois isn’t the only state in which partisan mapmakers run amok.
Everybody does it
Democrats may have the upper hand in redistricting in Illinois, but Republicans are just as eager to take advantage when possible. The Republican wave in the 2010 midterm elections gave the GOP control of dozens of state legislatures – and with it, the power to draw maps that favored Republicans.
The result? In 2012, the GOP won 54 percent of congressional seats with only 49 percent of the popular vote.
In Wisconsin, where Republicans drew the maps, the GOP claimed 60 of 99 seats in the state Assembly in 2012 with only 49 percent of the statewide vote. That’s 174,000 fewer votes. The maps were so effective that Republicans held onto a supermajority in the state Assembly in 2018, even as Democrats swept the statewide offices.
Republicans drew the maps in Ohio, too. The next year, Ohio gave its 18 electoral votes to Barack Obama; Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown was re-elected…and Republicans claimed 12 of the state’s 16 seats in the U.S. House.
Obama won Pennsylvania, too, by five points, and Democrats swept four statewide races in 2012. But Republicans won 13 of 18 U.S. House seats. After a legal challenge, the state Supreme Court drew a new congressional map that resulted in a 9-9 split in the 2018 election.
North Carolina is basically a purple state: In 2016, voters narrowly elected a Democratic governor while handing a slim presidential victory to Donald Trump. Thanks to a masterfully gerrymandered map, though, that same election sent 10 Republicans to Congress and only 3 Democrats. A GOP lawmaker who helped draw the congressional maps that secured that 10-3 partisan advantage said he did so because “I don’t believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” A panel of federal judges ordered lawmakers to redraw the maps.
Some gerrymanders have been given nicknames by opponents (or judges):
Politicians are no doubt emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to put limits on partisan gerrymandering. In a 5-4 ruling in July 2019, justices said such disputes are beyond the reach of federal courts. That wasn’t exactly a stamp of approval: Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, conceded that the maps before the court were “highly partisan, by any measure,” then basically shrugged. “How much is too much?”
Roberts said the solution is for states to write laws to limit gerrymandering, or for citizens to pass ballot initiatives. Several states have already done so.
Momentum for fair maps is growing
Several states have adopted redistricting rules meant to limit the role of politicians.
In six states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington, Idaho and Montana — the maps are drawn by independent citizen commissions.
Models used by other states include having the maps drawn by nonpartisan legislative staff (Iowa) or a state demographer (Missouri); by an advisory commission, subject to legislative approval (Maine, New York, Utah, Vermont, Rhode Island) or by politicians but with specific checks to prevent one party from dominating the process (Ohio, Pennsylvania).
Five states — Colorado, Michigan, Montana, Missouri and Utah — have passed redistricting reforms since January 2018.
In Illinois, it’s much easier said than done. The state Supreme Court has all but ruled out the possibility of a citizen-drafted amendment. That’s why the most recent efforts targeted lawmakers, who can put the measure on the ballot themselves — and have every incentive not to. They didn’t do it.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote an unsparing dissent in the redistricting case, said later that she would “never accept” the majority ruling.
“For all those people out there who in some way can carry on the efforts against this kind of undermining of democracy, go for it,” said Kagan, speaking at Georgetown University Law School, “because you’re right.”
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