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Quoted from League of Women Voters of Illinois website.
On Tuesday, August 16, 2011, the League of Women Voters of Illinois filed suit in federal court in Chicago seeking to overturn the recently-enacted General Assembly and Congressional district maps in Illinois.
In a series of recent decisions the United States Supreme Court has upheld the First Amendment rights of corporations and wealthy candidates. Today we are asking a federal court in Chicago to uphold the First Amendment rights of the voters of Illinois. The longstanding Illinois practice of assigning voters to districts based on their political views and voting histories violates the First Amendment rights of our members and others throughout Illinois,”said LWVIL President Jan Dorner.
Governor Pat Quinn, in signing the Congressional and General Assembly maps, pronounced them “competitive” and “fair.” The League of Women Voters of Illinois believes that the people of Illinois will achieve more genuinely competitive elections and have a more genuinely competitive political system if the Governor and General Assembly stay out of the business of picking and choosing the views they want voters to express, hear and receive in the districts where they live and vote.
The gerrymandering that both political parties have engaged in for decades has resulted in districts so tilted to one political party or the other and so rigged to guarantee the re-elections of favored incumbents that voters in Illinois seldom have real choices in our elections. Our suit seeks to order the Governor and General Assembly to establish a new process for developing new legislative and Congressional districts through the selection of an impartial decision-maker or body that will ensure the least possible infringement on the
First Amendment rights of the people of Illinois based on their political views, opinions, or beliefs.
The League of Women Voters of Illinois is represented in this matter by the Chicago law firm Despres Schwartz and Geoghegan Ltd. Full text of the lawsuit is here.
General Assembly map Congressional map
via League of Women Voters of Illinois.
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- Suit Claims Democratic Bias in Illinois Electoral Maps (blogs.wsj.com)