Prairie State Wire

Change Illinois executive director Madeline Doubek wants to know what’s the rush in the growing fair maps debate.

“We can wait until August and make sure there is complete transparency and that every voice is heard and every person is counted,” Doubek told lawmakers during a recent House Redistricting Committee hearing. “The best possible way forward would seem to me to be to seek some relief from the courts so that the constitutional guidelines are satisfied in this extraordinary circumstance.”

While the task of handling the once every decade job of map redrawing typically falls to the party in charge, this time, things have been made mainly different by COVID-19. With the Census Bureau not expected to have data usually used for map drawing available before a June 30 deadline, republican lawmakers are hoping to have more of a voice in the process.

Many of them are pointing to the People’s Independent Maps Act as the answer. The measure would give the state Supreme Court the power to appoint 16 independent citizen commissioners to an independent redistricting commission with 30 days of passage.

“We need a more partisan perspective from the drawing of the maps,” Doubek said. “It is clearly what the people of Illinois have said in scientific survey after scientific survey that they want and that they expect. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in an extraordinary situation this year and well I certainly agree with everything that was outlined in the language from the previous fair maps amendment that was introduced in the legislation.”

Still, other GOP lawmakers are calling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to honor his word, pointing to a vow he made as a candidate not to sign off on any map drawing that lawmakers create.