Associated Press: Democrats set to OK new legislative maps over criticism

Associated Press: Democrats set to OK new legislative maps over criticism

Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, said the maps the Legislature will vote on Tuesday “will not be crafted of public input, but of pure politics.” “At each opportunity in this redistricting process, it’s as if lawmakers went out of their way to ensure the creation of these maps had as little public input as possible,” Young said.

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois Democrats on Tuesday are expected to approve new legislative boundaries over objections from Republicans and some community groups that the process was unnecessarily rushed and maps drawn behind closed doors to keep Democrats in power.

Tuesday’s vote is a do-over of maps that majority Democrats approved and Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed earlier this year. Those maps prompted lawsuits from top Illinois Republicans and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, who argued they were flawed and unconstitutional because they were based on population estimates from the American Community Survey rather than the 2020 census.

The new maps, which House and Senate Democrats posted online for the first time Monday afternoon, will be used in elections for the next decade. …

Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, said the maps the Legislature will vote on Tuesday “will not be crafted of public input, but of pure politics.”

“At each opportunity in this redistricting process, it’s as if lawmakers went out of their way to ensure the creation of these maps had as little public input as possible,” Young said.