Current Issues

February 22, 2010

President’s Message: Reapportionment, Citizens’ Petition Drive for the Illinois Fair Map Amendment
There is a voter initiative underway that you need to know about! The Illinois Chamber supports this effort and encourages you to engage in the campaign to put a constitutional amendment to address problems with legislative redistricting on the November 2010 ballot. This is time critical!

Politicians Choosing Voters instead of Voters Choosing Politicians:
Following completion of the federal census at the beginning of each decade, Congressional and legislative district maps are redrawn by the members of the Illinois General Assembly. Obviously, the process has a guaranteed bias towards allowing incumbent legislators to draw maps that favor their own re-election. It is commonly acknowledged that this process conveniently lets politicians chose their voters instead of letting the voters choose their politicians.

In the past decade, there have been 547 elections that included an incumbent versus a challenger. Under the current map, the incumbents won 536 times and the challengers 11. That is an astounding 98% success rate for incumbent legislators! In 275 of the elections, almost 45%, there was absolutely no challenger at all. Just 27 elections were decided by 5 percentage points or less. That means only 4% of the total races were actually competitive.

If the political parties are unable to adopt a legislative district map through the normal law making process, the stalemate is broken by a game of chance by ‘lot”, literally pulling the tie breaker’s name out of a hat! The political party lucky enough to win the drawing has completely partisan redistricting authority.

In the past three decades, the Democrats have won the honor to redraw the legislative maps twice and the Republicans once. In each case, legislative district maps were drawn by the winner to favor their own party and to disenfranchise the citizens of the other. The real losers, of course, are: competitive, representational democracy and you, the people of Illinois.

This process is not unique to Illinois or contemporary times. The creation of confusing, irrational and ugly legislative districts is often referred to as “Gerrymandering”. The term was coined in the Boston Centinel in 1812 to criticize precisely the kind of politically expedient map making that is despised in Illinois.

Simple Test:

As illustrated by the Congressional maps below, any reasonable and rational individual can determine at a glance which state’s mapmakers respect their voters’ choices and which state’s politicians have abused their power to protect political self-interests.

The voter initiative does not require a change in determining the next Illinois Congressional map. However, the same forces are at work when drafting the boundaries of legislative districts. Cleaner legislative maps will undoubtedly influence the construction of the future Congressional district lines.

The solution is changing the Illinois constitution:
This year Illinois voters have an incredible opportunity to provide real and meaningful election reform. In the wake of last year’s semi-successful legislative effort to bring ethics and campaign finance reforms to state government a new effort has been launched to amend the Illinois Constitution to redefine how legislative apportionment will occur.

The Illinois Fair Map Amendment is a citizens’ petition drive to change the Illinois Constitution and the manner in which legislative districts are drawn. The objective is to remove power from the entrenched Springfield political elites. The amendment will provide stricter guidelines for district boundaries and assign the task to an independent bipartisan commission.

Unlike to current closed door process the commission meetings will be open to the public. The commission will be required to hold hearings across the state to take testimony before a map is drawn and after it creates a suggested map. Maps will be drawn in a manner that prior voting data and incumbency shall not be considered and maps shall not be drawn to favor or discriminate against any political party or group. It raises the bar by changing the vote required by the General Assembly in creating legislative districts from the current simple majority to a 2/3 vote. Finally and most importantly, the current "tie breaker" system of drawing one of two names out of a "hat" is replaced with a "Special Master" chosen by the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and a justice of the opposite party.

RESTORING COMPETITIVENESS ELECTIONS REQUIRES YOUR ACTION:
This citizens’ petition drive for the Illinois Fair Map Amendment will not be easy, but there is a diverse coalition of organizations circulating petitions at community events, business functions, and visiting their neighbors door to door. In order to reach the goal of nearly 280,000 valid signatures by May 1, we solicit and welcome your help. Sign the petition and volunteer your time to pass additional petitions for signatures. Circulate this email among all of your friends, family, co-workers, and fellow disgruntled Illinois citizens who want to clean up our state’s political environment. Encourage others to join this effort and do likewise. You must engage NOW and take action immediately as the matter is time critical.

Visit www.ilfairmap.com. to learn more about the citizen petition drive for the Illinois Fair Map Amendment. At the website, you can download petitions for your community along with instructions to properly circulate them. If you would prefer a detailed packet of information with petitions tailored to your community by mail, please email Don Gray, Advocacy Director at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce at dgray@ilchamber.org.
Together, one signature at a time, we can take back Illinois and begin to reform the culture of corruption that permeates Illinois government.