Maryland, Illinois Democrats Backing Away From Redistricting
Crazy idea: How about every state redraw its map at the proper time and make it about equal population?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been pressuring states to redistrict their maps to give the Democrats more seats.
Maryland and Illinois won’t comply.
Illinois
Out of all the states, Jeffries targeted Illinois? Really? The Democrats outnumber the Republicans 14 to 3.
The new map would make it 15-2. I guess one is better than nothing for these people.
Also, Illinois is beyond corrupt, so it’s probably the party’s best bet.
Jeffries met with the representatives “whose districts could be redrawn.” Blacks hold those four districts.
Yes, it’s all about race. God forbid we make it about population size.
Oh, it doesn’t help that Illinois has been bleeding residents for years.
ABC7 said lawmakers have circulated a map, and a few people have seen it. The meeting with Jeffries did not have a map, though.
FOX 32 reported that the office of House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside) confirmed “his caucus would not be passing any map this week, but that ‘all options remain on the table.'”
The office of Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) also said the chamber won’t consider a new map this week.
This week is the veto session:
Veto Session is a short period when the Illinois General Assembly reconvenes after the regular spring session. Lawmakers return to review any bills the Governor has vetoed; a formal rejection of a bill becoming law. Lawmakers can then override, accept, or adjust those decisions.
While the primary purpose of Veto Session is to consider vetoes, lawmakers often use this time to address other key issues and pass new legislation that did not make it through the regular session. This use of the Veto Session is common in Illinois these days, where our governor and both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly work to align during the legislative process when possible, making vetoes fairly rare. Moreover, this makes Veto Session an important opportunity to advance unfinished business like funding priorities, environmental protections, and sustainability policies that need one last push before the year ends.
Illinois redraws its map at the start of a new decade. But the Democrats are desperate to take back the House in 2026:
Jeffries said any potential Illinois redistricting wouldn’t necessarily need to be approved this week, but the clock is ticking. Candidates started filing petition signatures this week to appear on the ballot for the Illinois March 17, 2026, primary election. It’s not clear how Democrats would solve the procedural riddle of changing districts once ballots are finalized, but it would have to clear the General Assembly.
Maryland
Again, why choose Maryland? The Democrats lead the Republicans by seven districts to 1.
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson also announced the General Assembly will not redraw the state’s map before the 2030 census.
I guess Ferguson has been paying attention to California because he cited legal risks. From The Baltimore Sun:
In a letter to his fellow Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday, Ferguson said the decision was made following individual conversations with senators who expressed concerns about national redistricting efforts and pressure to counter map changes by Republicans in Texas and other GOP-led states.
“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Ferguson wrote.
Democratic State Sen. Antonio Hayes admitted that Gov. Wes Moore “wants to see redistricting changes that benefit Democrats.”
But Hayes also admitted that Ferguson’s announcement makes “redistricting a ‘dead issue'” in Maryland.
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Comments
Temu Obama has no clout with anyone. After the government reopens his caucus will have a hard time holding back their communist clique. All of those soundbites he gave during the shutdown will haunt he and the demonrats all the way through the 2026 election cycle.
His argument seems to be that black people are different from other Americans and are too stupid to vote like they should so need special help.
This website offers a way to end gerrymandering at all levels: https://www.notogerrymander.com/
I would be interested in any thoughts
I worked for the Illinois legislature during their last bloodbath of a redistricting effort. They squeezed every drop of blue they possibly could out of downstate and forced incumbent republicans to run against each other. I don’t think they could gain another seat if they tried.
On the other hand, yes it is very much about race. Mike Madigan’s old district has turned increasingly hispanic, others have turned more black, and even the dems don’t want to add to the black caucus.
Here is a website where I propose a method to end the gerrymander at both the congressional and legislative levels. https://www.notogerrymander.com/
Where is his sombrero?
It’s been split up into totopos.
I think we should just end gerrymandering by all sides.
To eliminate gerrymandering, that implies that there is a dispassionate manner to quantify gerrymandering to evaluate different plans. There are several that have been proposed, any and all are better than the present situation, but require a legislative process that is written into law. That is the difficult part.
So the Dems get to gerrymander for 100 years and suddenly when Reps are able to do it too it has to stop?!
the solution is simple so its ignored..as usual
There’s not much juice remaining to squeeze in blue States. One thing that would upend much of the current shenanigans of redistricting is after apportionment to require an even distribution of Citizens in addition to the basic requirements of compactness, avoid crossing political or geographic boundaries. Say +/- 10% in population of US Citizens within each CD. That would definitely address the true issue of vote dilution.
Already done. The ‘equal representation’ part of the 14A has been used by the USSC to demand that CD’s have an equal number of people. Most of the maps drawn these days (the data and software are amazing for this) have districts that are with 3 people — three! — of absolute equality.
Equal representation by numbers is simply not an issue. Done.
Now compactness, geography, and chicanery all remain issues…
Nope not even close. While CD are drawn with roughly equal # of inhabitants some neighboring CD have wildly different numbers of US Citizens.
Adding in a requirement post apportionment among the States to require the CD within a particular State to contain a roughly equal # of US Citizens (+/- 10%) would drastically change how lines are drawn in States with large numbers of non US Citizen inhabitants.
Voters, not just citizens or inhabitants.
Part of the reason suburban women punched above their weight in voting for so long is because the population represented also includes children, and suburban areas had a greater population of non-voters (kids) relative to areas without children.
That would be members of “The People”, citizens of voting age. I fully support going back to the pre-1929 rule of having district be as compact as possible and follow existing administrative boundaries as possible.
I’m also a big fan of having more Representatives, equal to population divided by the least populous state. I’m not immute to the call from states like CA and to a lesser extent TX and FL that they are under represented in the electoral college
I prefer the Citizen # to ‘voter’ # b/c using the ‘voter’ # puts it into the hand of the State’s voter registration list which we know are not accurate. For example in CA, LA County alone had to be sued into cleaning up its registration list to remove 1.2 MILLION bad/ineligible registrations.
I know. How about draw districts based only on population and be done with it! Man, I should be in Congress
If you look at those States, there is no more gerrymandering that they can do without creating more swing districts.
This is all 4D chess.
The Democrats have been gerrymandering so long that there’s barely any more soap to squeeze out of that sponge for them.
The plan here is for the red states to start squeezing out all their surplus soap and bury them.
Then the Democrats will have to go to SCOTUS to sue for peace.
Forced flip-flop for the win.
SCOTUS has already said gerrymandering is fine. If you want to ban it, make a law.
I can’t speak for Illinois, but in Maryland there is absolutely nothing left to redistrict. They are all democrats. It would certainly be entertaining watching them attack each other, but besides that there is nothing left.
No, there’s still one Rep left. They could try to squeeze him out, but they’ve decided it’s not worth it.
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