McHenry Times

Republican state Sen. Craig Wilcox (R-McHenry) is blasting Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recent decision to sign off on what he’s sees as heavily gerrymandered Illinois redistricting maps.

“One thing has become clear throughout the remapping process this year, Gov. Pritzker and his allies have no interest in doing what is best for the people of Illinois,” Wilcox said in a press release. “By signing yet another gerrymandered map, he shows us all that power and control are what’s most important to him.”

A three-judge federal court panel began hearing oral arguments in the McConchie v. Illinois State Board of Elections case on Dec. 7 with the plaintiff arguing that the redistricting maps, approved on party lines, violate the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Joining the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) as plaintiffs are Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie and House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, with each insisting the maps inked by Pritzker serve to underrepresent minority groups by reducing the number of districts where Latinos make up a majority of the voting age population.

More recently, Illinois Republicans were asked to file their proposed remedy with the court, with their remedial maps being championed as fixing the flaws by creating more districts with minority voting-age populations above 50%.

With the New York Times blasting Democrats’ maps as “among the most gerrymandered in the country” around the same time that the U.S. Supreme Court declared that federal judges have no role in settling disputes over partisan gerrymandering, Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) has called on Pritzker to support the Fair Maps amendment, which calls for a non-partisan group to draw the legislative maps in the state.

“A healthy democracy requires competitive elections and new ideas, which is in the people’s best interest,” Brady said in a news release, according to the Belleville News-Democrat. “Our current system, which gives the party in power ultimate authority to redraw legislative maps, inhibits that. As a result, I am calling on the Illinois Senate President to ensure this measure gets called for a vote, and for the Governor to follow through with his pledge to support fair maps in Illinois. We need to take the power of drawing legislative maps away from politicians and put it in the hands of the people.”

In 2019, Pritzker had promised that he would not sign any maps that were unfair or gerrymandered.