Peoria Standard

State Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield) wasn’t shy about taking the podium at an Oct. 7 House Redistricting Committee hearing to announce he thinks Democrats have already closed the door on the issue.

“I don't hold out any hope that things will change from what has happened earlier this year with the legislative maps and the Supreme Court maps and how those were handled," he said at the hearing. "And I know you mentioned all the input through the various hearings we’ve had, but obviously the majority didn't listen to much of that input that was given at those many hearings and that's very honestly why those maps are in litigation right now when it comes to the legislative maps.”  

Butler said his view comes from having seen and experienced it all before.

“As for the congressional maps, Illinois has a terrible history of drawing grotesquely gerrymandered districts for political power and it's been done on a bipartisan level,” he said. “The current map that we are in – the congressional district that I live in – the 13th Congressional District was, no bones about it, drawn to elect a Democrat, linking together university towns from Champaign, Normal, Springfield, Edwardsville, across the state in a diagonal manner, where friends and neighbors get divided for pure political gain. The same things we talked about with the legislative maps. My friends and neighbors that I represent a few blocks away from me as a legislator are split between two congressional districts.”

Butler said the end result has made clear something he’s been saying as long as he can remember.

“I think that map especially underscores the need and the desire for so many of us to take the map-drawing process out of politicians' hands and give it to someone else,” he said. “Give it to the public to truly draw those maps.”

Butler said Democrats hadn’t even produced a map, leaving some to launch political campaigns against certain opponents without truly knowing what a given district stands to look like.

“I highly suspect a lot of people on the majority side already know exactly what the maps are going to be today,” he said. “And I'm sure over the next several hearings we will have plenty of opportunity to talk about that, but, we had an opportunity with these congressional maps to do it differently. We don't have the same state constitutional restraints on congressional maps that we have in the legislative maps.”

Democrats were recently forced to redraw legislative maps after Republicans raised legal issues over the way they were originally done in August. Pritzker signed off on the latest versions.

“It's not deja vu you're having, Gov. Pritzker did sign politician-drawn legislative maps on a Friday afternoon,” state Sen. Win Stoller (R-Peoria) recently posted to Facebook. “He has now broken his promise to the people of Illinois twice.”

As a candidate, Pritzker had pledged to veto any maps drawn along partisan lines.