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| Chamber Concerned About Redistricting |
The head of the Galesburg-area Chamber of Commerce says he thinks a proposal to essentially let voters decide how Congressional Districts are redrawn is probably the best way to go.
Chamber president Bob Maus says his group's Government Relations Task Force has been keeping track of efforts to get a constitutional amendment on the fall election ballot to essentially take away the power of legislators to essentially draw their own districts -- which statistics show has resulted in incumbents winning re-election 98% of the time in about the last decade or so.
Maus tells WGIL he thinks the Illinois Fair Map Amendment proposal, being spearheaded by groups like the League of Women Voters, the Better Government Association, and the Illinois Farm Bureau, is ideal because of how politics shouldn't really play into it.
"It neutralized the effect of having a political party make the choice, in terms of how the districts should be laid out on a statewide basis," Maus said. "This gives back to the voters the opportunity to choose their representative, not the representative choosing the voting bloc. And I think that's a pretty fair assessment of where it's at."
Maus says the 17th Congressional District is a perfect example of what's wrong with the current redistricting process, due to what has been a democratic stronghold on the district that goes through the Quad Cities, Galesburg, and even parts of the Springfield area.
If approved, an independent commission would be formed to draw the redistricting map, and approving it in the Illinois General Assembly would take a two-thirds vote. |
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| 02 15 10 by Newsroom |
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