Republican leaders in the Illinois House and Senate filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the constitutionality of the new legislative district maps that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law June 4.
Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie, of Hawthorn Woods, and House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, of Western Springs, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, arguing that the maps are based on survey data rather than official U.S. Census numbers and therefore violate the U.S. Constitution’s “one person, one vote” requirement.
“Today’s filing should come as no surprise to Illinoisans,” Durkin said in a news release. “The partisan process upon which the legislative maps were drawn flies in the face of strong recommendations made by countless advocacy groups and citizens who testified at the redistricting hearings.”
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By Raymon Troncoso
Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD Republicans on Wednesday tried to tie an indictment of a longtime lieutenant of former House Speaker Michael Madigan to the Democrats’ effort to redraw legislative district lines ahead of the General Assembly’s May 31 adjournment.
The latest indictment came Wednesday with just six days remaining in the legislative session, as former Madigan chief of staff Tim Mapes faced charges of lying to a grand jury about his knowledge of Madigan’s involvement with a prominent lobbyist who has also been indicted. Madigan has not been charged.
Republicans on a redistricting committee used the indictment as a new line of attack, complementing their claims that Democrats are trying to forge ahead with inadequate population data and a complete lack of transparency as to how the maps were drawn.
By Peter Hancock
Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers passed measures Friday to redraw state legislative and judicial district lines, less than 24 hours after the bills implementing the maps were introduced.
The latest versions of the legislative maps were released about 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The actual legislation to implement them was released in the early hours of Friday morning, according to lawmakers. Those bills were then heard in the House and Senate Redistricting committees during 9:30 a.m. hearings that were announced with about one hour’s notice.
Those revised House and Senate maps are similar to a draft set of maps that were released late last week and were the subject of joint committee hearings Tuesday and Wednesday. During the Tuesday hearing, the maps drew wide criticism from racial, ethnic and religious communities, particularly in the Chicago area, who complained that they broke up communities of interest and diluted minority voting power.
By Peter Hancock
Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers opened their first public hearing Tuesday on a proposed set of new House and Senate district maps with Democrats and Republicans still at sharp odds over how the maps were drawn and whether or not they are fair.
House and Senate Democrats unveiled the proposed maps last week. They were reportedly drawn using population estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey because official numbers from the 2020 census will not be available until August or September.
Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who was hired as a consultant by the House and Senate Democratic caucuses, testified that in his opinion, ACS data is acceptable to use for redistricting because in the five years leading up to the 2010 census, those estimates for Illinois were off by only about 0.3 percent.
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