Lake County Gazette

State Rep. Martin McLaughlin (R-Barrington) and colleagues are saying that their predictions about the way Democrats moved to redraw political maps are proving spot on.

“The official 2020 decennial counts released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week confirm that the Democrats’ redistricting plan violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, as well as comparable provisions of the Illinois Constitution,” McLaughlin posted on Facebook.

Republican lawmakers have long accused the Democrats of drawing up the new maps in a partisan and secretive manner. Now they say the process was unlawful.

“Despite bipartisan pleas to wait for the Census number[s] like 48 other states, Illinois Democratic politicians that were led by Gov. Pritzker ignored the voting rights of their own constituents in an attempt to hold absolute power for another decade,” Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods said in a statement.

With House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) also blasting the process, Republican leaders have filed suit in federal court challenging the maps that will influence the next decade of elections in the state.

Faced with meeting a June 30 deadline in a year where the collection of data has been slowed by the ongoing COVID pandemic, Democrats elected to turn to estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey in pushing through their redistricting plan. Had the deadline come and gone without action, the task of redrawing the maps would have been placed in the hands of an eight-person bipartisan panel.

Over Republican objections, Pritzker later signed the three maps outlining new boundaries for districts for the General Assembly, the Illinois Supreme Court and the Cook County Board of Review into law.

Republicans have also blasted Pritzker for breaking a pledge he made as a candidate to veto any maps drawn along partisan lines.

“By breaking his promise and signing this map that has now been proven to be widely inaccurate, Governor Pritzker once again sided with political insiders against the people of Illinois,” McConchie said.

In addition to asking the courts to rule the maps unconstitutional, the plaintiffs are asking that the job of map redistricting be completely taken out of the hands of politicians, either through the formation of a bipartisan commission or for a court-appointed “special master.”