A Controversial Redistricting Measure Will Not Be Up For A Vote This Year
By Stephen Gossett in News on Aug 26, 2016 4:52PM
Voters will not see a referendum on the ballot in November that, if passed, would have changed the way legislative boundaries are drawn in Illinois. The state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that such a ballot initiative is unconstitutional.
The proposal would have created a new 11-person board of commissioners to determine political maps rather than members of the General Assembly. The decision upheld a previous Cook County judge’s ruling from July. The Supreme Court ruled against the referendum in a 4-3 decision.
The ruling was issued just one day prior to the state’s ballot-finalization deadline.
Gov. Bruce Rauner, a vocal proponent of the measure, said in a statement on Thursday that the decision “does nothing to…change people’s views of how the system is rigged and corrupt.”
The governor said that the current process favors politically biased, geographically warped political borders:
“Legislative districts should represent people based upon the community where they live. Politicians should not pick their voters by drawing spaghetti-like district lines with the sole intent of keeping one party in power regardless of how the people vote.”
But the court decided that the proposal did not meet the granular “structural and procedural” requirements for a constitutional change. “The intent demonstrated by both the plain constitutional language and this court’s prior case law imposes clear restrictions on the scope of permissible ballot initiatives,” Justice Thomas Kilbride wrote in his majority opinion.
An advocacy group for the proposal was funded in large part by major Rauner donors such as investing magnate Sam Zell and billionaire businessman Lester Crown. The opposition was headed up by a union-backed group called the People’s Map, which filed the lawsuit. They argued that the proposal would hurt minority representation in state office. The complainant attorney has previously represented House Speaker Michael Madigan, the Washington Post points out.