2 ex-Obama admin. officials launch bipartisan effort to create fairer legislative maps in Illinois

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A pair of high-ranking officials from the Obama administration are putting aside political differences to launch a new push for fair maps in Illinois' state legislative districts.

The goal is to take partisanship out of the process and give voters a better voice in elections.

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Former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley is teaming up with Ray LaHood, the former Republican congressman who served as Transportation secretary.

Their goal is to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot next year to establish an independent commission to draw state legislative maps.

"Give the elections back to the citizens of Illinois, who deserve it," LaHood said. "They do not deserve these outrageous maps that have been drawn by politicians for their own political gain."

LaHood and Daley are co-chairing Fair Maps Illinois. They launched their effort before civic leaders at the Union League Club. It is a bipartisan effort to address the negative impact of gerrymandered state House and Senate districts by taking the hyper-politics out of the map making process.

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"It is an attempt to get there, to get a better, fairer system," Daley said.

The goal of Fair Maps Illinois is to restore more power to voters to determine their representatives by putting a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would establish a citizen-led committee to redraw the maps after the 2030 census.

"And the key is that they are not permitted to use voting records, partisan information to create the map, and it takes away partisan gerrymandering," said election attorney Michael Dorf.

They say it is gerrymandering that ignores natural community boundaries with maps that let politicians pick their voters, instead of allowing voters to pick their elected officials. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is supporting the fair maps effort.

"We live in a participatory democracy. Less and less people are participating, and legislators believe that they need to be beholden to the people who are going to fund their campaign and not to the average voters," Lightfoot said.

All the recent attention given to the remapping fight in Texas and now, California, could give the Fair Maps movement in Illinois a boost.

READ MORE | California moving forward with partisan redistricting effort to counter Texas' move

"If this gets on the ballot, the people of Illinois, for the first time in a very long time, have a chance to send a statement to the political system both sides, that we want this thing to be different," Daley said.

"So, I think we have an opportunity, but we can't be overconfident. People are even more cynical, even more disengaged now than they were 10 years ago. So, we got a lot of work ahead of us," Lightfoot said.

Daley and LaHood estimate they will need to raise about $4 million to make this happen. They estimate they will have to gather more than 600,000 petition signatures to get on the November 2026 ballot.