Illinois Redistricting Must Protect Fair Representation and Meet Common Cause Fairness Criteria
Common Cause, the nation’s premier redistricting leader, is urging Illinois state legislators to ensure that any mid-decade redistricting meets the organization’s six fairness criteria.
The DePaulia: Illinois Voter Registration Bill Sparks Controversy Over Implementation
Automatic voter registration seemed to be the only thing Illinois state Democrats and Republicans could agree on in 2017. The bill received not only bipartisan, but unanimous support by state senators, making Illinois the 10th state to sign in automatic voter registration in August 2017.
The Southern Illinoisan: Reform Advocates Push for Tighter Lobbying Controls in Illinois
Government reform advocates in Illinois are urging state lawmakers to impose stricter rules on lobbying activity at the Statehouse, including a ban on lawmakers themselves working as lobbyists with other levels of government.
NPR Illinois: Illinois Census Office Works To Give Out Consistent Correct Information
As Illinois prepares for the 2020 census count, leaders of the state census office said they're focusing on getting correct information out to communities, in particular clearing up confusion about job qualifications for census enumerators, the use of online forms and the timeline for the decennial count.
Medill Reports: Auto-Voter Registration in Illinois Not Complying With Law, Experts Say
Jay Young celebrated in 2017 when then-Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the automatic voter registration bill into law. Young, among several other nonprofit and voting rights advocates, thought Springfield’s approval signaled the end of a long, painstaking process that had required months of political appeasing and redrafting legislation.
“There are a lot of advocates and community members who thought the bill was signed, a switch was flipped. That we won. In fact, that’s not the case,” said Jay Young of Common Cause Illinois, which backed automatic voter registration. “This is exceptionally frustrating.”
Illinois gained national attention in 2017 when then-Gov. Bruce Rauner was among the first Republican governors to support automatic voter registration. The law set a July 2018 deadline for the secretary of state’s office to offer automatic voter...
NPR Illinois: Illinois Census Activities Get $29 Million
Illinois could lose up to two congressional seats after 2020, going from 18 to 16. Billions of dollars in federal funding are given out based on population for healthcare, education and other services.
Peoria Journal Star: Illinois Could Lose Extra Congressional Seat, Billions of Dollars if Residents Dodge Census
Although the official count does not start for another year, the federal government and state and local governments are ramping up their efforts to make the next census as accurate as possible.
Activists, lawmakers and community leaders around the state, meanwhile, are fighting to address all the factors that might contribute to an undercount.
NBC Chicago: Dollars and Sense: Here’s How Much Bruce Rauner and J.B. Pritzker Spent on Their Campaigns for Illinois Governor
"The concern is that just the amount of resources they have at their disposal tend to drown out all those other voices," Young said in an interview at his Chicago office. "This money, it’s a plague, unfortunately, on our electoral system."
NPR: Pritzker Breaks Campaign Finance Record, Annoys Illinois With $80 Million Of Ads
"It's just distressing where you see these figures and I just feel like it makes people think that their democracy really isn't for them anymore," says Jay Young, who leads Common Cause Illinois — a nonpartisan government watchdog group — has been tracking the Pritzker-Rauner money fight.
