Bipartisan co-chairs Bill Daley & Ray LaHood are leading a bipartisan redistricting reform initiative to pass a constitutional amendment to the state legislative mapmaking process in 2026
Former senior Obama officials Bill Daley and Ray LaHood are heading Fair Maps Illinois, a drive to amend the Illinois Constitution in 2026 to eliminate gerrymandering for state legislative districts in Illinois.
“It’s simply the right thing to do,” declared Daley, who was chief of staff for President Obama and Commerce Secretary for President Clinton. “Gerrymandering protects those in power and shuts voters out of elections. This is not a partisan issue—it’s a democratic crisis. Both parties have used gerrymandering to lock in power, silence dissent, and erode trust in government. As other states play partisan games that compromise our democracy, Illinois can be a model for reform.”
Fair Maps Illinois is a new, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) citizen organization that plans to educate voters about the evils of gerrymandering, recruit volunteers, and garner more than 450,000 petition signatures to put a proposed amendment to amend the Illinois Constitution on the November 2026 ballot. The proposed amendment would only reform the state legislative redistricting process (and not modify the Congressional redistricting process), as confined by constitutional limitations on citizen-initiated amendments to the Illinois Constitution.
“Gerrymandering shifts decision-making to the primary election of the majority party in a district,” said LaHood, a former Republican member of the U.S House and US Secretary of Transportation under President Obama. “Gerrymandering denies the opposing party’s voters and independents any say in the election, and sharply reduces competition. Nearly half of state legislative races in Illinois are uncontested, and less than 5% are competitive. That’s not democracy.”
LaHood pointed out that in 2024, 54 of the 118 Illinois House districts were uncontested, and only 4% were contested (decided by less than 5%). In one-party districts, winners are decided long before the general election, leaving independents and voters from the other party without a voice. Fewer than one in four Illinoisans vote in primaries, so most voters never have a real choice.
The Fair Maps Illinois co-chairs project their group will have to raise several million dollars to conduct a statewide petition drive as well as combat a legal challenge that is sure to come from political insiders who benefit from gerrymandering.
In 2016, in a 4 Democrat to 3 Republican decision, the Illinois Supreme Court knocked off the ballot a proposal backed by more than 600,000 voters that would have created an independent redistricting commission for Illinois. The court found the proposed language too complicated.
Daley and LaHood launched Fair Maps Illinois at a nonpartisan Lincoln Forum event in downtown Chicago on Tuesday, August 19th, along with two bipartisan lawyers, including Michael Dorf (constitutional lawyer & legal counsel to numerous high-profile Democrats) and Bill Cadigan (former chairman of the state board of elections). Dorf and Cadigan drafted the proposed amendment along with a bipartisan team of constitutional and election lawyers seasoned in redistricting reform. Their primary goal was to develop an amendment that will make targeted reforms to a broken redistricting process in Illinois, but also pass constitutional muster before the Illinois Supreme Court in the event of a legal challenge.
“Fair Maps Illinois is proposing a clear, simplified amendment that closely follows the existing language in the state constitution for redistricting,” said Dorf. “Our proposal beefs up the requirements for compactness, requires following governmental boundaries wherever possible, and prohibits the use of incumbent and partisan data in mapmaking. That’s the key to fixing our broken redistricting process.”
“We feel this approach is clearly constitutional, and that the state high court will agree,” Cadigan added. “This is a good government reform that the vast majority of Illinoisans agree with. It’s a key reform needed to begin to restore trust in government. For too long, the insiders in Illinois—both Republicans and Democrats—have run the show to the detriment of ordinary people. We want to give more power back to citizens.”
Fair Maps Illinois, led by Daley and LaHood, plan to roll out a bipartisan list of supporters in the coming days and are building a growing bipartisan and nonpartisan coalition for reform.
Fair Maps Illinois has until May 2026 to achieve its goal of 450,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2026 general election ballot. If they are successful, Illinois voters will decide on the matter in November 2026.
For more information, go to FairMapsIllinois.org. You can download a copy of the statewide petition there.
***Courtesy of Fair Maps Illinois***
