Illinois came in for a lot of ridicule when Governor JB Pritzker provided sanctuary to Democratic state legislators who fled Texas to stop passage of a Republican gerrymander.  Even left-wing late night TV host Stephen Colbert confronted Pritzker with a map he had signed into law that had the most contorted maps of any in the country.

A bipartisan coalition in Illinois is now pushing a ballot measure that would take away the drawing of new lines from the state legislature and give it to a commission. A less partisan commission would surely produce a fairer map than the current one which resembles an ameoba and elects 14 Democrats and only three Republicans.

We’d prefer a solution similar to how neighboring Iowa handles redistricting – it has computers draw the initial lines and doesn’t allow where incumbents live to be a factor. But anything would improve the “statist quo” in Illinois, which even Pritzker admits looks like the product of “a kindergarten class.”