Democracy dies in Illinois. It’s a case study in how Democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule. Democrats in Washington have tried in the last two years to entrench their power nationally as they have done in Illinois. Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin in this Congress blocked Democrats from blowing up the filibuster to do so.
Those levers include a constitutional amendment they placed on the ballot enshrining the right to collective-bargaining that will augment government union power.
The WSJ Editorial Board makes the case: Why Democracy has died in Illinois.
Democrats held supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court before the election. They jammed through new state legislative maps that forced 12 Republican incumbents into six House districts. Democrats held 73 of 118 House seats under Mr. Madigan’s gerrymander. Their new, more extreme gerrymander helped them pick up four to five more seats.
Democrats also redrew state Supreme Court districts for the first time in 60 years. Three Justices are elected exclusively from Cook County, which includes Chicago. This guarantees Democrats three seats.
Unions and Democrats have counted on the Democratic Supreme Court to block pension reforms and a ballot initiative backed by former GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner that would have established an independent redistricting commission. Democratic Justices have prevented citizens from using the ballot process to bypass the Legislature and enact government reforms.
To retain their 4-3 High Court majority, Democrats this year needed to win one of two judicial elections. Both districts were trending Republican so Democrats simply redrew the map to give themselves an edge.
They also passed legislation limiting the influence of Republican donors like Citadel CEO Ken Griffin by capping individual contributions to judicial candidates and independent expenditure committees both at $500,000. A federal court struck down the independent expenditure limits, but the candidate caps hurt Republicans.
Even as Democrats claimed to deplore the influence of money in judicial elections, billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker circumvented the individual caps by using his personal trust fund to contribute to the Democratic judicial candidates in the two competitive races. Both won, giving Democrats a 5-2 majority. Not only did Democrats choose their voters, they essentially picked the judges who would hear any challenge to their overreach.
The sound you don’t hear is the national press deploring any of this, or even reporting it. Democratic warnings about the death of democracy would be more credible if they didn’t try to strangle it themselves.
It has gotten so bad in this high cost/regulation state that 27 counties are pursuing a separation from the deeply corrupt, socialist management of the Illinois state government and Chicago’s Cook County. It’s a growing list of Illinois counties disenfranchised with the goings-on in Cook County. They have voted in nonbinding resolutions to leave Illinois and form a new state.
Residents in three more counties—Brown, Hardin, and a portion of Madison County—voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution allowing their county board to explore the possibility of leaving the state. In all, three counties—close to 75% of residents—were in favor of the idea. Illinois has 102 counties, with Cook the most populous.
The driving force behind the referendums was to allow the county board of each area to coordinate with other county boards to explore the possibility of leaving Illinois because of the influence that Chicago and Cook County have on the state’s political decisions.