On Tuesday, January 22, 2019, State Representative Tony McCombie announced she will join all 43 of her House Republican colleagues by co-sponsoring HJRCA 10. This legislation is designed to implement a Constitutional Amendment, requiring an independent redistricting commission to take the redistricting process out of politicians’ hands.
“The time of politicians picking their constituents should come to an end. Under the current map, communities of interest are gerrymandered apart, and their voices are not adequately heard,” said Representative McCombie. “I look forward to working with the Legislature to pass this Constitutional Amendment. I will do my best to hold Governor Pritzker to his promise to veto any map that is gerrymandered along partisan lines.”
In a tweet on Thursday, January 10, Governor B. J. Pritzker said, “I 100% oppose gerrymandering. Legislative districts should adhere to both the Federal and Illinois Voting Rights Acts….I support redistricting reform that advances fairness and removes politics from the process.”
HJRCA 10 would establish an independent commission, comprised of 11 members, charged with proposing a legislative map. The commission would be required to hold public hearings, both before and after releasing a proposed plan.
The map would need to receive the affirmative vote of at least seven commissioners, including two from each political party whose candidate for Governor received the most and second-most votes, and two commissioners not affiliated with each such political party.
A November 9, 2018, Chicago Tribune article wrote, “In discussing his support for fair maps earlier this year, Pritzker stated, ‘We should amend the (Illinois) Constitution to create an independent commission to draw legislative maps.’ And there is no reason to doubt his support of reform as genuine. Pritzker gave $50,000 to the 2014 fair maps initiative, throwing his support behind such an initiative long before he ran for Governor.”
The Constitutional Amendment provides a provision allowing the Supreme Court to intervene if the commission fails to adopt a new map by June 30 of the year following the decennial census.