Illinois Farm Bureau unhappy with state legislative redistricting maps

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Illinois Farm Bureau unhappy with state legislative redistricting maps

Legislative redistricting maps following the most recent census have been approved in Illinois and state Farm Bureau President Rich Guebert says there were some drastic changes this time around.

“We are seeing some of the districts go from one side of the state to the other, having narrow strips between counties or drawn around other municipalities. It’s just kind of a hodge-podge type of drawing.”

He says IFB policy supports redistricting based on census data, but the state used the American Communities Survey to draw the maps and he thinks there is quite a discrepancy between the two.

“Our policy sates that we want to have a bipartisan look at redrawing the maps every ten years using census data and that has not been the case this year. We would like to see more transparency, equity and balance in the redistricting process.”  

He says these maps are set in stone so they’ll just have to wait and see how things play out, but they would like to see things more contiguous and along county boundary lines moving forward.

The redistricting maps will be in effect for Illinois midterm elections in 2022. Illinois has moved their primary election to June to allow candidates time to form petitions in the new districts.

Comments from a interview with Rich Guebert

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