In the Sept. 28 editorial (“With mostly powerless voters, Illinois democracy hangs by an elongated thread”), the Tribune Editorial Board rightly laments the fact that Illinois voters are powerless over a gerrymandered legislative map that has kept one party in power for two decades.
While the editorial board has put off discussion of solutions until this Sunday, I’d like to put one on the table that I haven’t seen proposed anywhere: Do away with maps drawn by the legislature. Each party should draw its own map.
How would this work? Each party would be allocated the number of legislative seats reflecting the percentage of its statewide vote total. For example, if the Democrats won 52% of the statewide vote, and the Republicans 48%, they would be awarded 52 and 48 seats, respectively, in a 100-seat legislature. Each party would draw its own map, spreading the number of seats it was awarded across the entire state.
The result would be overlapping maps, so that each village, township and county would have a representative from each party. Finally, Republicans in Chicago would have a representative in Springfield. Likewise, Democrats in a reliably red county in central Illinois would also have a representative.
Since the maps would not be known until after the election, voters would have to choose which party they want to represent them. Individual candidates selected to be the representative for each district could emerge from a primary or caucus process before the election. After the election, each party’s leadership would draw its own party’s statewide district map and select the eligible candidate to be the representative.
I call this “competitive party representation” because it puts the parties in direct competition for getting out their voters in order to win the most seats. Rather than discouraging voters as the current system does, this system amplifies the value of each vote.
— Jeff Kvistad, Roselle
Eliminate pension clause
In response to the Tribune Editorial Board’s call for a fair electoral map, I can only shout, “Amen!” There are two things that must be done to reverse Illinois’ terrible slide into insolvency: One is to fix our legislative map. The other is to eliminate the clause that enshrines employee pensions in the Illinois Constitution.
Literally nothing else matters. Nothing can be fixed until these two problems are addressed. And until then, citizens with the means to do so are going to continue fleeing Illinois.
It’s sad, because in a lot of ways this is a great state, but greed and powermongering are destroying it. All but one of my five kids has moved away, and I can’t blame them. Unless things change, I’ll probably end up leaving too.
Here’s hoping we can find a way to do better.
— David Vancina, Manhattan, Illinois
National redrawing plan
The Sunday editorial against gerrymandering in Illinois fails to account for two facts: Both Democratic and Republican governors and legislators are responsible for the pension situation in the state; thus, giving Republicans more power in state government is not a simple solution. And the current tyrant in the White House is openly trying to rig the next election; thus, while red states such as Texas comply with the edicts of President Donald Trump, blue states such as Illinois cannot unilaterally surrender their Democratic advantage. The only reasonable solution is a nationwide plan to redraw districts in all 50 states in a nonpartisan way.
The Sunday article about the Pilsen neighborhood (“A reason to stay”) includes a lament by some young Hispanic people regarding the changes afoot in the neighborhood. Guess what? I’m sure past residents of Pilsen — e.g., the Irish, then the Germans and Czechs, and then the Poles — were unhappy about the changes, too, as subsequent groups — such as today’s Hispanics — moved into Pilsen.
Neighborhoods are fluid, and no one group “owns” a neighborhood.
— Kim Freitag, Elgin
Let’s use similar tactics
Regarding the editorial on gerrymandering in Illinois: I agree in principle with the Tribune Editorial Board position, and I hope that someday we can return to the idea of contiguous, geographic divisions of a certain population for voting districts as contemplated in the Constitution.
The editorial was published around the time that the governor of Missouri signed a bill dividing Kansas City’s 5th Congressional District into three parts so that Republicans might hold seven of the state’s eight seats. He did this notwithstanding the fact that Missouri voters are 46% registered Republican, 33% Democratic and 20% unaffiliated. Yet, the state legislature there chose to give the Republican Party potentially nearly 90% of the representation.
Texas recently allocated an additional five seats to districts leaning Republican, which could give that party 30 of 38 seats, or almost 79%, even though the 2020 presidential vote was 52% Republican and 46% Democratic.
The editorial board fails to mention that a supermajority in Missouri and a majority in Texas gave their legislatures opportunities to rig the upcoming election. The board is either naive, ignorant or deliberately deceptive when suggesting that the Illinois state map is not totally connected with the national election.
The editorial actually makes me more inclined to ask our elected officials to reorganize our map with the same proportions that these other states seem to believe is acceptable. Perhaps, by matching their nefarious deeds with the same tactics, we can force a return to normalcy and voter integrity.
— Thomas M. Gurewitz, Libertyville
Take high road? Really?
The Tribune Editorial Board asks Illinois Democrats to avoid gerrymandering when Republicans in Republican-led states are gerrymandering as fast and as far as they can. The board is encouraging Democrats to be nice and fair when the Republicans are cheating as fast as they can.
For years, I have watched Democrats try to take the high road when Donald Trump has refused to follow any rules, regulations, boundaries or laws. He is without shame or sense of decency; winning is everything for him, no matter the cost in human misery and life. He is on a path to destroy this country, which is already unrecognizable from a year ago.
How about we put into place laws that prevent any gerrymandering? You can bet that Democrats would support it, and a howl of rage would rise from the Republican Party, because they cannot win on policy — if they are truthful as to what they are really proposing. But Americans swallow Trump’s lies, regardless of how dumb and dangerous they are.
I guess the board still thinks he is going to bring peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, have Mexico build the wall, find a cure for autism and collect tariffs from China.
— Karen Evans, Glen Ellyn
Not solely Illinois problem
I believe that Sunday’s editorial on gerrymandering was far too one-sided. The gerrymandering of legislative districts is wrong, but the editorial makes it seem as if this practice is an Illinois problem. It most certainly is not:
Since the United States Supreme Court declined to make a decision on its legality, it is a national problem. What would be the consequences if Illinois were to redraw the maps in such a way as to restore the power and fairness of each person’s vote? Would the states that are GOP-led and engage in this practice follow suit? Highly unlikely, since the already-gerrymandered states that are GOP-dominated, Texas being one example, are actually escalating the practice outside the traditional census period.
Thus, it is not a stretch to suggest that we could end up with the GOP having a permanent majority in the United States House of Representatives, which would in turn reduce the power and fairness of each person’s vote in all 50 states.
— Sean Nettle, Homewood
People ahead of politics
We can all agree that government shutdowns are bad. Bad for government workers and bad for citizens. There are no winners, and any shutdown causes unnecessary disruption of government services. Every time it happens, our political parties dodge and weave to try to absolve themselves of any blame for the shutdown and point the finger at the other side.
I have always fumed over that finger-pointing. The reality is that our dysfunctional politics are to blame, and each party shares a good bit of responsibility for that. Wouldn’t it be great if our elected officials could put people ahead of politics?
— Dean Gerber, Chicago
Federal leaders a disgrace
With the government shutdown going into effect, and President Donald Trump vowing to fire many government workers, I believe he should start by firing himself, every senator and every member of Congress. Then we can start over, and none of those people should be eligible to run for office again.
Our federal government leaders are a disgrace!
— Bill Sullivan, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin
Kirk shooting exploited
The shooting of Charlie Kirk has unleashed the censorious impulses of the Donald Trump administration. Many have described the speech crackdown that followed the shooting as the latest form of “cancel culture.” But what is happening is different and more sinister.
President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump officials quickly seized on the Kirk shooting to tar the political “left” (against available evidence) as the source of most political violence in this country. They vilified Americans who supposedly celebrated violence, though only against Kirk. They also attacked a broader range of critics, such as those who inappropriately “emphasize” disagreement with Kirk’s views. Vance urged supporters to turn suspect social media posters in to their employers, and numerous administration officials and aligned politicians have since participated in efforts to identify and punish those guilty of wrongspeak about Kirk.
Widespread doxxings, firings and harassment have followed, including of people who never celebrate violence at all. Many who explicitly condemned violence — while merely criticizing Kirk’s views — have suffered.
The media largely covered this as a mere rightward swing of the cancel culture pendulum. But Trump and Vance are not students shouting down a campus speaker or anonymous Instagram posters calling for a product boycott. Cancel culture, stifling as it can be, lives in the panoply of disparate, mostly private, voices in our marketplace of ideas. Its force is diffuse in origin and directed at a scattershot and shifting array of targets. The Kirk speech crackdown is consolidated and driven from the highest reaches of government, and it is directed at a specific viewpoint. It looks less like a “culture” than a policy.
The First Amendment is primarily concerned with “state action,” rather than private conduct, because a government that has the power to control ideas is antithetical to democracy. The Supreme Court has noted that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” No presidential administration gets to sanctify Kirk — or any person or idea — and punish heretics to its chosen orthodoxy.
There is no shortage of anonymous online voices calling to ruin the lives of people they disagree with. But this time, the calls are coming from inside the (White) House. We gloss over the gravity of this development at our peril.
— Kevin Fee, legal director, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois
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