The flurry of legislation came in the waning hours of Illinois spring legislative session and ultimately spilled into overtime, with the House adjourning around 2:40 a.m. and the Senate at
Amanda Vinicky | June 1, 2021 8:09 am
(WTTW News)
Illinois’ primary date next year is moving, from March 15 to June 28 – a move that gives candidates for the U.S. House time to organize their campaigns and petition drives, given that legislators will not finalize a new map of Congressional districts until fall.
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Without the change, Congressional candidates wouldn’t have enough time to complete the cumbersome task of submitting petitions to get on the 2022 ballot by Nov. 22.
The switch is solely for the ‘22 midterm election cycle, when voters will elect the next governor and secretary of state.
“The state has always had a really long window between the primary and the general (election), which makes the political season long, and risking negatively affecting public policy making,” sponsor Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, said. “So our proposal is to do this one-time change, just to see how it works, and I think it will be beneficial to th
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.
WBGZ Radio 5/31/2021 |
By Kevin Bessler - Illinois Radio Network
Democrats released revised legislative maps Thursday evening and approved them the next night without any support from Republicans, who criticized the data used to draw the maps and the process by which the legislative districts were drawn.
Last Friday, Democrats released draft legislative boundaries, but no data to back up how the lines were drawn. They held several hearings where community groups demanded the data be released.
Early Friday morning, the amendments to the bills that contained the updated maps were filed and for the first time so was the data used to draft the boundaries. Hastily-called hearings were held where multiple community groups said they had as little as ten minutes of notice.