Former Illinois House candidate Marco Sukovic said nothing good can come from the way legislators are dealing with map redistricting.
“I testified at the hearing and it’s the process itself,” Sukovic told the Prairie State Wire. “It’s not one that engaged the public in any meaningful, substantive manner. I asked the senate redistricting committee to give me two figures. The first how many people have participated in these hearings to date, keep in mind they are about halfway through with these hearings, and they told me only 46 people have. You’re thinking about a state of over 12 million people and only 46 people have participated.”
Not long ago, GOP state Rep. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) raised many of the same concerns, arguing that too many voters were being shut out of the process.
The Illinois Capitol building.
| Photo Courtesy of Jim Brown/Flickr
"This is our seventh redistricting hearing in the last week, and while participation has been limited to short notice, there's been a couple of important scenes that have been repeated by witnesses from across the state and across the political spectrum," Rezin said during a Senate Redistricting hearing for Kankakee and Will counties. "The first is transparency. Witness after witness has been critical of the lack of transparency in this process. That includes requests for more robust public engagement, more notice of hearings and for answers on how the public can draw their maps and what data we should be using."
Sukovic fears that things may actually be worse than what’s been imagined.
“We might even want to check that out because I think they’re duplicates,” he said.
However, Republicans continue to push their People’s Independent Maps Act as a solution.
In a year where the U.S. Census Bureau has indicated the data typically used to base such decisions on will not be available before the state deadline, the measure would give the state Supreme Court the power to appoint 16 independent citizen commissioners to a redistricting commission within 30 days of passage.
Legislative redistricting occurs every 10 years, soon after the census population data is updated. Generally, the majority legislative party sets the new map.
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