Illinois elections are broken — with roughly half of legislative races uncontested after politicians drew maps to lock in power. Now, two political veterans, one a Democrat and one a Republican, think they’ve found a way to fix it.
One is Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman from 1995 to 2008 and transportation secretary under President Barack Obama. The other is Bill Daley, son of former Mayor Richard J. Daley and commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton as well as chief of staff for Obama. The two met with the editorial board Sept. 23 to talk about gerrymandering and what to do about it. They sit on different sides of the aisle politically, but they’ve come together for a cause that’s bigger than partisan politics — they’re fighting a pernicious problem that has sapped the health of democracy here in Illinois and likely will worsen matters if nothing changes.
We support them in that fight.
Last Sunday, in the first part of this two-part editorial, we wrote that in Illinois, the most urgent threat to democracy is the state of play before votes even are cast — political maps drawn deliberately to disenfranchise voters. Unlike congressional maps, which are about federal representation, state legislative maps have a direct impact on who ends up writing Illinois laws and controlling the state budget.
We understand that the national contest over bare-knuckled gerrymandering is one in which Illinois Democrats never would unilaterally disarm, and that’s understandable. We’re focused squarely on the maps that determine who governs the state of Illinois. And right now, the system allows the party in power in Springfield to draw districts to maximize its advantage. Voters don’t choose their politicians; politicians choose their voters.
It’s a reality everyone acknowledges, yet it continues to defy repeated attempts at fixing. On the campaign trail in 2018, Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the practice and vowed to veto an unfair map, but he quickly broke that promise once in office.
So how to change this sorry record of futility?
Daley and LaHood think they’ve cracked the code. And they want to take the issue to voters in November 2026 in the form of an amendment to the state’s constitution.
“He’s gonna duck it, everyone’s gonna duck it, until it’s on the ballot,” Daley said of the governor. He explained that he understands why Pritzker and most current elected Democrats are reluctant to publicly support redistricting reform, even if they’ve backed it in the past. Democratic outrage over midcycle redistricting in Texas and other GOP states at the behest of President Donald Trump is complicating the effort. Daley said he shares that outrage.
But he also believes that fury about congressional redistricting should not stop Illinoisans from pushing for redistricting reform of state legislative mapmaking — an effort that would change nothing about the congressional maps that have produced 13 Democratic U.S. House members versus just three Republicans.
Daley and LaHood’s group, Fair Maps Illinois, is beginning the process of gathering the signatures necessary to put a referendum on the ballot, and that’s no small feat. They’ll need about 400,000 folks to sign their petition by May, a process they estimate will take as much as $4 million to accomplish.
Right now, state legislators draft and enact the state legislative maps. The governor can veto them, but a three-fifths vote in both chambers can override him — and Democrats currently hold veto-proof majorities.
Fair Maps Illinois proposes instead that the state create a bipartisan commission of eight nonpoliticians and four legislators — two Republicans and two Democrats. The GOP and Democratic legislative leaders in Springfield each would get to appoint four of the eight commission members who aren’t themselves lawmakers. That panel — purposefully set up to give neither party a voting advantage — would then be tasked with producing the state’s electoral maps and would be expected to reach consensus.
If the commission can’t agree, the state Supreme Court’s chief justice and the most senior justice from the opposite party would name designated “tie-breakers” to break the logjam, presumably in favor of one party or the other. One of them would be randomly selected. But the goal would be never to get to that point, assuming that neither party would want to take a chance on the other producing a map on a partisan basis.
The proposal also includes safeguards to prevent segregating districts by voters’ party affiliation, such as banning political data from map-drawing, because it makes partisan manipulation more difficult. And their plan would require compact, fair maps that align with municipal and county boundaries. If the amendment passes, the rules would change after the 2030 census — no companion legislation would be required from the General Assembly.
We’ll admit it sounds a tad convoluted. And that’s a drawback.
But otherwise it seems to us like a very good plan. We’d be open to other suggestions, and we certainly understand the desire to remove politicians from the process as much as possible, which this proposal does not do. Other states, for example, have independent commissions to draw maps.
To move forward, they’ll need to survive any legal challenges that come up and persuade Illinoisans before the November election — securing either three-fifths of the voters casting a vote on the specific question or a simple majority of all voters participating in the election, even those who do not vote on the amendment.
LaHood added that “the politics are different” than in 2016, when then-House Speaker Michael Madigan maneuvered to get a redistricting ballot initiative defeated in court. Madigan has been sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison on felony convictions on corruption charges.
Both men seem confident their proposal will pass legal muster. Other notable figures are supporting the effort as well. The bipartisan group’s board members include former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and former GOP Rep. Bob Dold, among others. In support, too, is the League of Women Voters.
If it works, Daley and LaHood told us that the General Assembly will better represent the people of Illinois, because a fairer system will create more competition and curtail extremism, producing policy outcomes geared more to the political center in Illinois than what we’ve seen out of Springfield in this decade.
Remember, in 2024 just 4% — 4% — of state legislative races were competitive, meaning they were decided by 5 percentage points or fewer. That helps explain why even though the GOP won about 44% of the presidential vote statewide, it holds just 34% of state House seats.
Daley and LaHood come from wings of their respective parties that unfortunately are all too rarely represented in legislative chambers anymore. They don’t view the other side as the enemy, they don’t think their party has a monopoly on good ideas, and they believe in the art of compromise.
Their old-school alliance strengthens the case for action. We hope they can pull it off.
If they do, Illinois voters should seize on this chance to reclaim their democracy in 2026. Success will mean the beginning of a fairer, more competitive and more accountable government. And it could well give those Illinoisans who feel voiceless a reason to stay in Illinois rather than throw up their hands and pull up stakes.