UPDATED 10:15 p.m.
A House committee Tuesday evening passed a constitutional amendment intended, said House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside), to guard against potential changes to the Voting Rights Act.
Welch, denying Republican claims that redistricting could ignore the contiguity and compactness of new districts, said the amendment is not about preserving his party’s political power. “Let me tell you what’s undermining our democracy. Donald Trump and Washington Republicans are undermining our democracy. This United States Supreme Court is undermining our democracy.”
Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – If Illinois Democrats have made gerrymandering an art form, Republicans say, their latest work is a masterpiece.
A proposed constitutional amendment would, House Republicans said at a news conference Tuesday, “enshrine” what the GOP calls Democrats’ way of cheating their way to a supermajority.
State Rep. Amy Elik (pictured, center) (R-Godfrey) pointed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s late-night tee vee appearance last year in which he Said told Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert, “We handed it over to a kindergarten class and let them decide.” Said Elik: “It may be a joke to him, but to the millions of people who are living in districts which don’t reflect their communities, it is not a laughing matter.”
If the amendment indeed gets to the ballot, both sides would have to spend months stating their respective cases to the voting public. “I cannot wait to go around the state to explain how the question is to enshrine their gerrymandering and to cheat you further out of a vote,” said State Rep. Ryan Spain (pictured, right) (R-Peoria).
The amendment, sponsored by House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside), would rank the following as priorities for legislative mapmaking: 1) substantially equal in population; 2) allow all citizens the opportunity to participate and to elect representatives of their choice on account of race; 3) to create, where practical, racial coalition of influence districts; 4) contiguity; 5) compactness.
