Illinois Valley Times

Grundy County Board Member Greg Ridenour opposes the retention of Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride, saying he does the bidding of House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago).

“Unseating Thomas Kilbride must be one of our top priorities this November as we aim to bring reform to our state and begin to right the ship,” Ridenour said. “Kilbride is Madigan’s hand-picked Supreme Court Justice and has been called ‘Madigan’s biggest victory.’”

In 2016, the judge voted to kill a “Fair Map” constitutional amendment to allows a non-partisan committee, rather political parties, to draw election districts.

Illinois district Lines are redrawn every 10 years based on U.S. Census data. The political party in control is in charge of the redistricting.

The Fair Map proposal would have have created an eight-member independent commission to decide where district lines are drawn, the Daily Illini reported.

A non-partisan, nonprofit group, CHANGE Illinois, has pushed for redistricting reform for the past three elections, the Daily Illini reported.

“We believe that cheating the system is being done on both parties, and we want to create an independent districting commission that would be fair and transparent,” Liliana Scales, advocacy director for CHANGE, told the Daily Illini.

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is among those opposed to Kilbride’s retention for another 10 years on the Supreme Court.

“Tom Kilbride is on the bench almost solely because of nearly $4 million in campaign cash provided by Mike Madigan, the corruption-tainted speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and longtime head of the Chicago Democratic Party,” LaHood wrote in a recent opinion piece for the Rock Island Dispatch Argus.

In 2016, 600,000 Illinois citizens signed petitions to place the Fair Map amendment on the ballot, LaHood said.

“Kilbride wrote the 4-3 decision that, on a technicality, denied the voters their constitutional right to vote on the issue,” said LaHood.