“I find it highly unlikely that’s going to happen in the Illinois General Assembly. Any legislative constitutional amendment has to have bipartisan support in Springfield to pass,” said Brad McMillan, who heads the Institute for Principled Leadership in Public Studies at Bradley University. “The powers that be who are currently in control don’t want to lose control.”<\/p>\n
Every 10 years after the U.S. census, lawmakers redraw legislative maps. Republicans and Democrats usually deadlock and put the names of each party in a hat, granting the winning party complete control of the redistricting process and protection for incumbents.<\/p>\n
To change the way that’s done, there must be a constitutional amendment – either driven through legislative leaders or a citizen-led petition drive.<\/p>\n
The Fair Map Amendment would require districts to be compact, protect minority voting rights, respect municipal boundaries and eliminate political favoritism. A new bipartisan advisory committee would create maps with limitations on who can serve to ensure fairness and allow for public input.<\/p>\n
Any plan would have to be approved by a two-thirds House and Senate majority. Barring a decision there, the decision would go to an independent “special master” to decide.<\/p>\n
Petitions to get the issue on the ballot have to be filed by May 2.<\/p>\n
“We were told by legislative leaders that they were going to address redistricting reform last year. That never happened. We waited as long as we possibly could, but we had to act,” said McMillan, who also served on the Illinois Reform Commission, a temporary group appointed to tackle redistricting and other issues.<\/p>\n
“The coalition firmly believes it will result in better government, more accountability and a healthy two-party system with balance – something voters have been saying loud and clear is what they want,” McMillan said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karen McDonald can be reached at 686-3285 or kmcdonald@pjstar.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n While GOP lawmakers want to change how the state maps its legislative districts with a constitutional amendment, a coalition isn’t banking on that happening. The Illinois Fair Map Amendment coalition is growing with partners the League of Women Voters, Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Farm Bureau and more. They launched a citizen-led petition drive to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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