Peoria Standard

State Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield) recently pointed out that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has again broken his vow to not approve of partisan-drawn legislative maps. 

“The governor has now twice broken his promise to not sign maps drawn by politicians,” Butler tweeted. “Why does ‘fool me once, fool me twice’ come to mind?”

Even with Republican lawmakers and some reform groups still clamoring about how the process was handled, the governor signed off on revised state legislative maps earlier this month.

Leading the charge among the advocacy groups urging the governor to hold off was CHANGE Illinois, which issued a statement blasting the maps as doing more to dilute minority voting power as anything.

“Many major groups agree the new maps reduce the numbers of majority Black voting age population districts and majority Latino voting age population districts,” the statement said. “The Latino Policy Forum asked Pritzker to veto the maps for the same reason.”

In a push to meet a June 30 state constitutional deadline, lawmakers initially adopted maps during the spring legislative session, with the drive being spearheaded by Democrats despite the group not yet having the U.S. Census Bureau data typically relied on for the job of drawing districts.

Pritzker signed off on the new maps after Democrats called a special session to adjust them after official population numbers proved the variances between districts were far outside what is allowed under U.S. constitutional law.

The matter is now before the courts with Republicans demanding the job of drawing the maps be left in the hands of a bipartisan commission. The job of redrawing maps comes every 10 years and in times past has been reserved for the party in power.