Illinois Redistricting Proposals Fall Short

Partisan fighting over the best way to improve the way Illinois draws its legislative map means there likely won't be any change.

A proposal backed by Democrats to overhaul the process fell two votes shy in the Illinois House Thursday.

At least one Republican had to get on board for it to pass. None did.

The political stakes of redistricting are high, as a district can be drawn to all but assure victory for a party's candidates.

The current system often leaves which party controls the map-drawing to chance.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie says the Democrats' plan is an improvement. Instead, she says, Illinois will be left with the status quo. That process breaks a deadlock by drawing a Republican or Democrat's name from a stovetop hat, like the one Abraham Lincoln wore.

"And when they pull a name out of a hat we'll be the laughing stock again," says Currie.

But Republicans say they couldn't support the Democrats' proposal because it allows legislators to handpick the voters who will be responsible for their political fate. The GOP says its plan ... which is favored by groups including the League of Women Voters ... removes that self interest. An independent commission draws the map from the start.

GOP Representative Jim Watson of Jacksonville, an Iraq War veteran, chided the Democrats' plan for giving legislators the ability to draw their own districts.

"Two years ago I was in Iraq and I was helping a nation try to forge a democracy", said Watson. "And I will tell you right now if we would have said 'Hey Anbar Provincial Chairman ... you want to make your own map and have legislative districts and vote on it?' ... that the United Nations would have come in and said 'hell no!' "

But Democrats blocked that plan in the General Assembly. and a campaign to collect enough petition signatures to get it on the ballot has fallen short.

"We did a great deal in a very, very, very short time", says League of Woman Voters executive director Jan Czarnik. She says that in just four-and-a-half months, the Fair Map campaign volunteers gathered an estimated 150,000 to 160,000 signatures. But 280,000 valid signatures are needed to get a constitutional amendment on the Illinois ballot.

The deadline to submit petitions to get a constitutional amendment on the Illinois ballot is Monday.