Efforts to change the redistricting system in Illinois appeared dead Thursday, after a Democratic plan was defeated in the Illinois House and supporters abandoned a petition drive to put a Republican-supported constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
The House voted 69-47 on largely partisan lines for the Democratic plan, Senate Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 121, but 71 ‘yes’ votes were needed.
Democrats cast all the ‘yes’ votes, while Republicans and one Democrat voted ‘no.’
The Illinois Constitution requires that lawmakers’ districts be redrawn after each U.S. Census to keep districts approximately equal in population. However, the last three redistricting efforts have been decided by lottery. Both parties had offered rival plans to revamp that process.
Woodstock Rep. Jack Franks was the lone Democratic opponent. He said the amendment’s “fatal flaw” was that it still gave legislators first crack at drawing their own districts.
“I couldn’t get past that because I want to have a system where it’s not legislators choosing their electors, it should be the electors choosing the legislators,” he said.
House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said the measure was a step backwards.
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn even said Thursday he wasn’t sure the Democratic measure was true reform.
Cross said Quinn’s opposition “speaks volumes” about allowing legislators to draw their own districts.
“People saw this for what it was,” he said. “It’s been time for real change, and this does not do it.”
House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, said Quinn’s position was “shocking.”
“Maybe he needs to spend more time in the General Assembly checking in with us, because I think he’s dead wrong,” she said.
Cross said a better approach was the so-called Fair Map Amendment, which would have put map-drawing power in the hands of a commission appointed by the legislative leaders.
That measure was blocked by a Democratic-controlled committee in the legislature.
Supporters also tried to get around the General Assembly by gathering petition signatures to pu the Fair Map on the November ballot through citizen initiative.
In a letter sent Thursday evening to The State Journal-Register's editorial staff, however, the Illinois League of Women Voters -- which coordinated the Fair Map effort -- said that coalition had fallen short of the nearly 300,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot.
"We simply did not have enough time to finish the kind of statewide campaign necessary to meet the constitutional requirements of a citizen initiative," League executive director Jan Czarnik wrote.
John Guidroz can be reached at 782-6882.
Chamber of the Illinois House of Representatives in .
The Illinois House of Representatives failed last Thursday to approve a Democratic Party-sponsored amendment to the state constitution's redistricting procedures, killing any hope of reforming the controversial process this year. The vote was 69–47, just two votes short of the 71-vote supermajority needed to propose constitutional amendments for ratification by voters in the next election cycle. 

In the redistricting process, the boundaries of legislative districts are redrawn every ten years following the US census. Districts are redrawn such that they contain constituencies roughly equal in population. During the last three redistricting periods, however, discussions have resulted in deadlock such that the maps were essentially chosen by lottery. Democrats, Republicans, and regular citizens alike have all unsuccessfully attempted to reform that process this year. All constitutional amendments must be proposed by Monday in order to be voted on in a referendum during the election next November. 

The Democratic bill, Senate Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 121, was sponsored by State Senator Kwame Raoul and State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie, both from Chicago. The representatives voted mostly on party lines: Democrats hold 70 seats in the House, and 69 of them voted for the amendment. 46 Republicans and one Democrat voted against it. Currie presented the amendment as an improvement because it "gets rid of the tiebreaker." In fact, she argues that the public benefits from giving the job of redistricting to the legislature as a whole, rather than an appointed committee. "...leaving the decision in the hands of 177 people who are elected by the geographic diversity...is more democratic than giving it instead to the hands of four legislative leaders."

Currie was referring to the Fair Map Amendment, a citizen-led proposal to create a nine-member commission that would contain no legislators. The party leaders would select eight of the members, however, which Democrats have opposed as intoducing too much bias. Others are against the amendment on the grounds that it does not adequately ensure minority representation. 

The lone Democratic dissenter, Representative Jack Franks from , disagrees. "I couldn’t get past that because I want to have a system where it’s not legislators choosing their electors, it should be the electors choosing the legislators," he said. Even Illinois Governor Pat Quinn was not enthusiastic about the bill and thought it was not "true reform".

Republicans have introduced the citizen-initiated Fair Map Amendment in the legislature as an alternative and have pushed for its passage. The bill was quickly struck down by a Democrat-led committee. At the same time, organizers of the petition drive for the Fair Map Amendment announced that they fell short of the nearly 300,000 signatures needed to bypass the legislature and directly place the question on the ballot.