Peoria Standard

Republican lawmakers were hopeful that this would be the decade for a fair legislative district remapping process, especially after Gov. Pritzker vowed during his campaign to reject any maps made by politicians and to support a fair map instead. 

With Pritzker having recanted his word and Democratic lawmakers pushing forward with remapping themselves, Republican legislators are annoyed, including state Rep. Ryan Spain (R-Peoria). 

"We have talked for years, going back to the previous attempts to pass a constitutional amendment through a citizen petition effort, that politicians should not be allowed to select their own voters," said Spain, who serves on the House Redistricting Committee. "It's been an anecdote, it's been a reality, but today we actually get to see exactly where it happens.

"This is the room where Democratic politicians come in and out selecting the very voters that they choose to represent, instead of empowering voters to choose their elected officials."

Spain called the repeated failure of the state to put the task of redistricting into the hands of the people "an injustice to democracy."

The representative pointed out that the full census data needed for an accurate redistricting is not even available yet, which should be reason enough alone to halt the Democratic-driven remapping. 

The U.S. Census data was delayed largely in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and lawmakers lurched forward with remapping when partial data was released last month. 

"As a state, we have invested more than $30 million and worked with community organizations throughout Illinois to make sure that we have the best, most accurate, complete and comprehensive census ever," Spain said. "Illinois really set records by our ability to work together to make sure that our census results are accurate and reliable."

Despite that, politicians are using incomplete, estimated and dubious data to make sure the maps can be drawn by them and not an independent commission. 

"So that they can uniquely control the outcomes and then impose them upon the people of the State of Illinois," Spain said.