Widow, District’s One Vote, Rebels

A quirk of political redistricting left an 86-year-old widow alone in a precinct with voters from another district. That means when the ballots are counted, everyone would know how Lynda Thorpe voted.

So, she’s thinking of staying home on March 17, the day of the state’s presidential primary.

“If my vote is not secret, I do not think that I will vote,” she said in an affidavit filed with the state Supreme Court.

In Kewanee Township’s 6th Precinct, Thorpe is the sole voter in the state’s 93rd House District. Everyone else in the precinct, about 100 miles north of Springfield, lives in the 94th District.

The state’s high court in January approved a Republican-drawn redistricting plan for the General Assembly’s 177 seats. Democrats are trying to overturn it in federal court.

Thorpe’s problem resulted from efforts to make legislative districts uniform in size, said Mark Gordon, a spokesman for the redistricting commission. The 93rd House District, for example, has 96,848 people and the 94th District has 96,868. Most House districts have exactly 96,869 people.

Henry County State’s Atty. Larry Vandersnick is asking the state Supreme Court to shift the new legislative district boundary so that Thorpe is included in the 94th District. “If you maintain this map, it violates the Illinois constitution and the right to a person’s secret ballot,” Vandersnick said.