A bipartisan push to let voters amend the Illinois Constitution to reduce politics in drawing state legislative maps has been suspended, with organizers saying the timing is “not ripe” amid a polarized climate shaped by mid-decade congressional gerrymandering wars nationwide.

In a statement released Friday, Bill Daley and Ray LaHood said that while the movement has been suspended, they have hopes of seeing it resurrected in 2028 and 2030 — ahead of the once-per-decade remap of Illinois House and Senate district boundaries following the 2030 federal census.

When organizers unveiled the effort on Aug. 19, they aimed to raise $5 million to promote and legally defend the initiative and to collect roughly twice the 328,171 valid signatures from registered voters needed by May 3 to secure a spot on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. But Fair Maps Illinois reported raising only $201,713 from 11 donors, according to reports from the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The suspension marks the third time in just more than a decade that voters will not get a chance to cast a ballot on constitutional initiative to make the drawing of Illinois’ legislative maps more independent and reduce political gerrymandering of boundary lines. Similar proposals in 2014 and 2016 were struck down by the courts.

The proposal would have affected only state legislative boundaries, not congressional districts. But Daley, former chief of staff to Democratic President Barack Obama and the brother and son of two Chicago mayors, said the “initiative has been confused with the bitterly partisan national congressional gerrymandering in Texas, California, and elsewhere” led by Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to try to keep a GOP majority in the U.S. House after the 2026 midterm elections.

“Unfortunately, the outrageous national gerrymandering battle initiated by President Trump has emboldened partisans to retreat to the extremes, but the vast majority of voters in Illinois and throughout the country know redistricting reform is desperately needed,” Daley said. “State legislative gerrymandering reform is deeply needed in Illinois, but the time is just not ripe for a successful effort.”

LaHood, who in Congress represented the Peoria area as a Republican before becoming Obama’s transportation secretary, said “extreme gerrymandering is wrong at the congressional level, and it’s wrong at the state legislative level.”

“Redistricting reform is an essential step to making government more accountable and less captive to the extremism and polarization that defines our national politics,” he said. “Absurdly drawn districts deny voters a meaningful role in our democracy, and it deepens distrust in government to an increasingly existential level.”

With the state under one-party rule in the last two redistricting years of 2011 and 2021, Democratic legislative majorities in the House and Senate passed and sent to Democratic Govs. Pat Quinn and JB Pritzker map lines designed to favor Democratic candidates and reduce Republican representation.

Pritzker, who is seeking a third term as governor, voiced support for an independent commission to draw legislative maps, but he signed the 2021 map. Saying he still supported an independent mapmaking process, Pritzker later said, “It’s not like I can force the legislature to do something like that.”

The current map adopted after the 2020 federal census has led to the election of overwhelming Democratic legislative majorities — 78 in the 118-member House and 40 in the 59-member state Senate.

The proposal pushed by Daley and LaHood would have stripped the legislature of its direct mapmaking duties for the General Assembly and instead given that power to a 12-member commission, with the four legislative leaders each appointing one member of their caucus and two people who aren’t members of the General Assembly. The Supreme Court would have submitted two names in a random draw to break a tie.

The plan also would have prevented commissioners from considering voters’ past voting history. But map lines would have had to comply with federal laws, such as Voting Rights Act protections for racial and ethnic groups. Districts were to have been based more along geographic county, municipal and township boundaries with an emphasis on compactness.

Because the state Supreme Court has previously limited citizen-initiated changes to the state constitution to issues that affect the structure and procedure of the legislature, the size of future General Assemblies would have been determined by a formula based on the state’s federal census population.

Organizers said a statewide survey conducted on behalf of the effort by Change Research showed the proposed amendment with 75% support, with Democrats backing it 75% to 11%, Republicans 78% to 9% and independents 64% to 13%.

Daley and LaHood said they hoped the state’s business and civic community would take up the cause in future years.

“Illinois voters overwhelmingly want redistricting reform because they know politicians should not be in charge of drawing their own districts,” LaHood said, adding that it “would pass if we could raise the resources to put it on the ballot and wage a campaign.”

“Illinois and our country need gerrymandering reform now more than ever, and our hope is that enough fair-minded leaders will step up and demand change before it’s too late,” LaHood said.

Daley said, “The business community and allied good government reform groups must lead the charge to fix the state’s problems, as they have done for generations.”

“We can’t give in to the cynicism that suggests Illinois — and this country broadly — is incapable of systemic reform,” Daley said.

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