McHenry Times

Prior to passing the House, the Democrat-proposed redistricting maps received opposition from state Rep. Steve Reick (R-Woodstock).

Reick reminded legislators, especially freshmen, to vote with their conscience.

“In all of this we have a lot of freshmen on the floor this year and I've been trolling around the Internet and I found the website for Margaret Croke,” he said. “Under the issues thing of ethics she says that she supports ‘fair maps for state and local legislative districts so that politicians don’t choose their districts, voters choose the politicians.’”

Reick also referenced a 2020 Chicago Sun-Times candidate profile of Croke where she said “I support a non-partisan redistricting process,” in reply to a question about gerrymandering. He also cited a line in a movie based on Saint Sir Thomas More's life.

“He gave his life because he wouldn't bend to the dictates of a king who told him to abandon his conscience,” Reick stated. “One of the great lines — and I’m speaking to everybody on this floor, not just you, Margaret, everybody on this floor — ‘when statesmen forsake their private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country on a short route to chaos.’”

Apart from redistricting, he said also pointed out that there are “a whole lot of other issues that seem to get decided along partisan lines instead of the lines that are drawn by our constituents telling us to vote our conscience.”

“If this is what it said in a campaign website if this is what you begin your legislative service saying, and you come down here and you violate your conscience by voting the way the party tells you to vote then you are helping lead this state on the short route to chaos,” Reick said. “We're not sent here to vote because some committee or some hierarchy in the party tells us this is how you vote that's how you vote. Knee-jerk voting is not what our people, what our constituents send us here to do. They sent us here to vote our conscience."

The proposed map was signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) and Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) filed a lawsuit in federal court to block what Republicans call "unfair maps" drawn and passed by the Democrats.

The GOP lawsuit argues that the maps’ use of American Community Survey (ACS) data violates federal law, including the defined "one-person, one-vote" provision under the U.S. Constitution.