Amid Republican party efforts to gain congressional seats through off-cycle redistricting in Texas, there's an effort to revive a push for an Illinois state constitutional amendment to make political redistricting less ... well ... political.
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and former Commerce Secretary Staff Bill Daley have signed up to push for a "fair maps" referendum in November 2026.
"You wouldn't have politicians picking their districts ... they’re all carved up," said LaHood. "My state rep, Ryan Spain, was born and raised in Peoria. He works at OSF in Peoria. His father has a small business in Peoria. In the last redistricting, he was completely drawn out of Peoria and moved north to Dixon and Princeton. He's got a very good Republican district, but he's been separated from people that he grew up with, his neighbors, his friends.”
The proposed amendment would create a 12-member redistricting commission. The "four tops," as they are called — the majority and minority leaders in the state House and Senate — would each recommend three people for the commission. Two of each group of three would be ordinary citizens, said LaHood. The third would be a legislator.
The Illinois Secretary of State would certify the recommendations.
“You cannot use political statistics, political data. You draw the maps to comport with cities and counties, so that the political data is not used as the criteria, but more the fact that they will be compact and contiguous and include entire cities and entire counties,” said LaHood.
Any commission with members recommended by state lawmakers is unlikely to be wholly apolitical. If the commission deadlocks, after a couple more steps, the decision defaults to a choice by lot. In some past cycles, the choice of which party’s favored map was implemented depended on a coin flip.
The proposal for the commission also focuses only on state legislative maps, not congressional maps.
LaHood said the state constitution does not allow a commission to draw congressional maps.
“The legislature would have to pass a law that would allow for the drawing of congressional maps by a commission. That's not allowed now under the Constitution,” said LaHood.
Other states
LaHood pointed to Iowa and California as states that have commission-based redistricting to smooth partisan tendencies to crack and pack districts. Those are techniques a party that controls the process uses to concentrate opposition party members in a district. It helps the map makers draw two or more nearby districts with a balance of voters more favorable to their party.
Alternatively, it can crack apart a geographic cluster of voters of a single party into adjoining districts that have a preponderance of voters belonging to the other party.
“If you look at the map of Iowa, the districts are compact," said LaHood. "Neighborhoods are not split up. Neighbors are not split up. Politicians are not disenfranchised and dislocated from their constituents that they've known all of their lives. To be honest, California has a very good commission system. Most of politicians that I've ever talked to in the state believe it works very well.”
Under the current system in Illinois, Democrats have often controlled redistricting because of their majorities in the General Assembly to create safe seats for members of their own party and [fewer] safe seats for Republicans, he said, adding that’s not good for democracy.
“It becomes untenable for people to run for office,” said LaHood. “In the Ryan Spain district, no Democrat will ever beat him, and so the people, the Democrats really, have no opportunity to have a say in who the representative is other than a Republican,” said LaHood.
LaHood and Daley hope to avoid court challenges to the referendum like the one in 2016 that drew a state Supreme Court decision preventing it from appearing on the ballot.
“The reason it was struck down was because an outside individual, the Auditor General, would be a member of the commission, rather than citizens,” said LaHood.
Such a referendum would need several hundred thousand signatures on petitions to get it on the ballot. LaHood noted the group involved in the 2016 effort, Change Illinois, hired a firm that paid people to collect signatures. He predicted a similar process would happen again.
“We will collect far more than the 365,000 that are needed, maybe more like 500,000 to make sure that we're able to withstand any kind of criticism, or people that think that the signatures aren't legitimate,” he said.
Change Illinois
Change Illinois has expressed concerns the new fair maps amendment would not perform as advertised and leaves out minority voters.
“We are first and foremost troubled by the initiative’s lack of robust engagement during the development of the proposal with community organizations and leaders, who are most impacted by racial and partisan gerrymandering. That shortcoming has led us to question who will benefit if the proposal were to make it on the ballot and ultimately be enshrined in the Illinois Constitution,” said Change Illinois.
LaHood disputed at least part of that statement.
“We involved them. We sought them out. We had meetings with them. We told them what we were thinking, why we were thinking the way we were. We asked them for their support. At this point, they've chosen the idea that maybe we didn't incorporate everything that they wanted,” said LaHood.
Change Illinois said fair maps have never been more important in light of states contemplating or starting mid-decade congressional gerrymanders to maximize partisan advantage.
“At the same time, we cannot abandon our principles and must ensure that reform efforts are rooted in the community organizations and leaders most affected by gerrymandering. Instead of trusting a politically controlled process to cure gerrymandering, we should focus on empowering and protecting voters through expanding the Illinois Voting Rights Act,” said Change Illinois executive director Ryan Tolley.
Supporters of the proposal said in drafting it, they had to work within the limits of the 2016 court opinion that requires legislative involvement, and consideration of the ... “structure and procedure” of the General Assembly.
LaHood said the effort to pass the referendum is a bi-partisan one. He is a Republican. Bill Daley is a Democrat. Former Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot also has publicly supported the initiative.
“We've reached out to other people that have been in politics and think that this good government opportunity will be appealing to people that have been involved in government or politics, and it's truly a bipartisan effort,” said LaHood.
If the proposal garners enough signatures and if it survives likely court challenges, the next step would be voter education about the intent and effect of the measure. LaHood acknowledged that will take money.
“This is a campaign. We will have to convince people that the commission is made up of citizens who will do what's right for the voters of Illinois. In terms of drawing these maps, it'll take several million dollars, like it would any statewide campaign,” he said.
The initiative would be placed on the 2026 ballot, but LaHood said it would not take effect until the next census provides data for the map makers, which puts its true effective date in 2032.
