Griselda Vega Samuel | uChicago.edu
Griselda Vega Samuel | uChicago.edu
Griselda Vega Samuel wants to make sure Illinois voters are heard in the raging debate over map redistricting.
“How many areas of Western Cook County provide at least two weeks between a plan and holding a plan so that the public can provide input?” Vega Samuel, a Midwest regional council attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), asked lawmakers during a recent House Redistricting Committee hearing where she offered testimony. “I will say that if you really want to facilitate and engage the public it has to be. I've obviously been working with the legislature so I understood this place, but how are we supposed to expect that any member of society will?”
Vega Samuel expressed those aren’t the only worries MALDEF officials have as the once-every-decade task of map drawing draws closer.
“There were difficulties with the data, the process,” she added. “We're still fighting that battle to make sure the census releases the best and most accurate data possible.”
Indeed, Census Bureau data usually relied on to complete the job isn’t expected to be ready by the June 30 deadline, a reality that has prompted Republican lawmakers to propose the People’s Independent Maps Act as a way of making the process a fairer one.
The measure would give the state Supreme Court the power to appoint 16 independent citizen commissioners to a redistricting commission within 30 days of passage. The members would be equally split politically.
At the same hearing, state Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield) told lawmakers a fairer process is something voters have long shown they want to see, pointing to a petition of nearly 600,000 signatures previously signed in favor of putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would pave the way for Illinoisans to make fair map drawing part of the state constitution.
"It's past time to change how we draw our political boundaries, and it's time to take it out of the hands of legislators who look after their own political self-interest," he said.
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