The League of Women Voters of Illinois filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming new congressional and legislative maps are unconstitutional because they assign voters to districts based on their political views and voting histories.
League President Jan Dorner said her organization decided to sue after looking carefully at the maps and concluding “it was obvious that incumbent politicians did not use objective criteria to draw the new districts.”
New maps are required every 10 years after the census reveals population shifts, and Democrats got to draw the new maps because they control the Illinois Legislature and the governor’s office.
Because of slowing population growth, Illinois now will have 18 U.S. House seats instead of 19. But the new congressional map puts five Republican representatives, including four first-term members, into districts where they must run against other incumbents in 2012. Illinois sent five GOP freshmen to Washington in the 2010 election, including Rep. Bob Dold, who won Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk’s old seat.
The map also created just one district where Latinos represent the majority — a new 4th Congressional District, now represented by Rep. Luis Gutierrez — although Illinois’ Hispanic population is 32.5 percent.
“It takes competitiveness out of the equation,” Dorner said. “We want an election where the results are not apparent before the campaign begins.”
The 13-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, asks the court to stop the state Board of Elections from implementing the new maps and order the governor and General Assembly “to develop a new process that uses an impartial decision maker or body to propose a redistricting plan” using neutral principals.
Neighboring Iowa employs such a system. Nonpartisan legislative staffers prepare the maps, and they are banned from considering where incumbent lawmakers live when drawing boundary lines. Their only charge is to make the new districts as compact as possible and as equal in population as possible.
Republicans also have sued over Illinois’ new maps, which Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn defended as fair when he signed them into law two months ago.
A lawsuit filed by the Committee for a Fair and Balanced Map, which includes 10 of the 11 Republicans in Illinois’ congressional delegation, claims the new congressional map “blatantly discriminates against Latino and Republican voters.”
The state’s legislative map also lumps Republicans together in new districts and makes other areas friendlier to Democrats.
But Dorner said Democrats and Republicans both have gerrymandered the maps for their own advantage throughout the years and “it needs to stop.” She said elections would be more competitive if the governor and General Assembly would “stay out of the business of picking and choosing the views they want voters to express, hear and receive in the districts where they live and vote.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court has made recent decisions that protect the First Amendment rights of corporations and wealthy candidates, now we are asking the courts to protect the rights of voters,” Dorner said.
Quinn defended the redistricting maps again Tuesday, saying they were drawn after “the most open process Illinois has ever had” that provided ample opportunity for the public to participate.
Some have said there wasn’t enough opportunity for input on the maps, despite three public hearings — two in Chicago and one at the state Capitol. Lawmakers approved the final legislative map just over a week after it was released and voted on the final map for the U.S. House less than 24 hours after it was publicized.
