YOU DESERVE A CHOICE IN ELECTIONS

Looking forward to the excitement of statehouse races in the March 18 Illinois primary election? Maybe not. This year, there are only 30 contested primary races in 118 House districts and two in 59 Senate districts.

If you’re like most Illinois residents and have no race in your district, there’s still a way to be politically active. You can get your name on a petition backing a constitutional amendment designed to make sure that one day there are many more competitive races — healthy competition — by end-

If you’re like most Illinois residents and have no race in your district, there’s still a way to be politically active.

ing the gerrymandering of state House and Senate districts.

Political parties like gerrymandering, which means drawing district boundaries in such a way that politicians pick their voters instead of the reverse. And with new technological tools, the politicians are getting a lot better at it. The resulting maps discourage challengers from going after entrenched politicians and lead to races where there is in fact no race. In November 2012, incumbents won 97 percent of the races in Illinois legislative districts. In two-thirds of those races, there wasn’t a single challenger. After drawing the maps, Democrats wound up with 63 percent of the seats in the General Assembly.

Since July, a coalition called Yes! for Independent Maps has been circulating petitions for the Illinois Independent Redistricting Amendment, which would create an 11-member commission to draw the boundaries of legislative districts. The coalition needs more than 298,000 signatures by May 4 to get the measure on the November ballot. Find out how you can help at independentmaps.org.

The plan calls for drawing legislative maps based on contiguous areas that are substantially equal in population; not diluting votes of racial or language minorities; putting cities and other local units in the same district when possible; not splitting up “communities sharing common social and economic interests”; not favoring a particular political party, and not taking into account where politicians reside. A separate nonpartisan panel would keep public officials, politicians and lobbyists from the commission drawing the maps.

Sign a petition. It may be your best chance to get a contested election in your future.