Illinois Valley Times

Rep. Ryan Spain (R-Springfield) said Gov. J.B. Pritzker's (D-Il) approval of a redistricting plan amounted to gerrymandering to favor Democratic legislators.  

Gerrymandering is the deliberate act of manipulating the boundaries of voting districts to favor one political party over the other.

"Democrat leaders have had multiple opportunities to change the map-making process over the years, including several this session, but the majority party has chosen to follow the same old playbook by blocking any effort for independent redistricting," Spain said in a Facebook post.

According to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, Pritzker claimed Republicans made no attempt to establish a commission or independent group to redraw elective districts, a claim Republicans  deny. A political analyst for the Chicago Sun Times said she thought Republicans had made such an attempt.

Pritzker ran for election in 2018 promising to veto legislative maps drawn by politicians, then reversed himself last month when he signed into law boundaries determined without Republican involvement, and approved by Democrats who hold a majority in the state Legislature.

Pritzker told the Chicago Sun Times he was not being dishonest.

“What I really want is a constitutional amendment for an independent commission to draw the maps,” he said. “That is what the legislature should have done, (but) didn’t do. There are people who wanted to have legislation passed for an independent commission. It’s unclear to me whether that’s constitutional or not, but that could have been a way to do it. Then, Republicans and Democrats working together in a bipartisan fashion would have been another way to get a fair map.”

In response, on June 9 Republican legislators in Illinois filed a lawsuit against Democrats in a federal court over the boundary changes, claiming the state’s voters were robbed.

“The tone-deaf Democratic Party of Illinois has robbed citizens of a fair and transparent legislative map-making process, and I plan to be a conduit for Illinois citizens who demand honesty by ensuring they also have their day in court,” House Republican Leader Jim Durkin said in a statement quoted in the Sun Times.

Kiannah Sepeda-Miller, a writer for the Better Government Association, quoted in a Sun Times report on June 13, said it appeared Republicans had made at least an effort to appoint a commission to redraw elective maps and that Pritzker’s statements in her opinion were mostly false.

“Republicans filed and promoted legislation this session aimed at creating an independent redistricting commission, and in his remarks Pritzker cited creating an independent panel via legislation as one of the ways lawmakers could have tried for an independent map,” she said.