By: Ted Dabrowski and Nick Binotti
Few Illinoisans found reason to vote in the most recent primary elections. Overall, voter turnout was maybe just 20 percent statewide. Perhaps it was a lack of competitive elections. Or gerrymandering. Or people think their votes don’t matter. Maybe it was a little bit of each.
Whatever it was, few seem to care. And that’s bad news for Illinois’ future. Rising crime, higher property taxes, increased corruption and more won’t go away if Illinoisans who want change stay away from the ballot box.
A look across the state shows how few people bothered to show up.
In Winnebago County, where Rockford is located, just 14 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. That was a pathetic 13,000 people. In Sangamon County, home of the state’s capital, it was only 13.9 percent. Just 19,000 voters showed up.
And in Chicago, where violent crime, illegal immigration, a potential tax hike and general disenchantment with Mayor Johnson gave people plenty of reason to show up and vote, turnout was just 25.9 percent.
Apathy prevailed even in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s race, where voters had an opportunity to categorically reject Clayton Harris, III, who was widely seen as the anointed successor to soft-on-crime incumbent Kim Foxx. Eileen O’Neill Burke barely eked out a victory.
Unfair maps help contribute to low turnout
Other factors contributed to a lack of voter turnout. For one, the lack of competition at the top of both tickets had an impact. The lack of statewide races such as governor or U.S. Senator factored in as well.
But another factor was a lack of choice. According to WTTW, 88 percent of primaries were uncontested in Illinois, the fewest in the past 20 years. Why show up if the only candidate on the ballot already won by default?
Lack of competition is one of the byproducts of gerrymandering. It serves to suppress competition. If a district leans too heavily either Republican or Democrat, the primary becomes the de facto election.
For example, take a very blue district where two Republicans run in a primary for the chance to unseat a Democrat in the general election. But that blue district has a long history of voting Democrat 80-20 in the general election. That Republican primary vote doesn’t even matter.
This lack of competition goes both ways. With Cook County Republicans having nothing substantial to vote for, many undoubtedly pulled a Democratic primary ballot to vote against Clayton Harris III. The more moderate Democratic candidate, Eileen O’Neill Burke, benefited from that crossover. In this case, gerrymandering – or lack of competition – hurt progressive voters.
There were a few exceptions. Some local bond or tax referendums motivated additional people to vote. Take Central School District 301’s ask for $195 million in bonds, which failed 64 to 36.
Voter turnout for that referendum (35.5 percent) was more than double Kane County’s overall election turnout (15.3 percent).
It’s amazing that an anemic 35 percent turnout can be considered a high point for this primary.
****************
What’s more amazing is this: Turnout is terrible even though Illinois politicians have made voting easier than ever. Early voting, curbside voting, vote-by-mail.
Ease of access means nothing when people think their votes don’t matter.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- A Spring Break drive to Florida offers yearly reminder of just how unfair Illinois gas prices are
- ‘708’ mental health taxing boards: Are Illinois voters schizoid or just depressed?
- Total repudiation: Illinois unions lose big trying to take out two downstate lawmakers
- Voter apathy and four key takeaways from Illinois’ 2024 primary elections
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
There’s low voter turnout because there’s too many elections. There’s been how many elections in Chicago and Cook in the past 24 months? June 2022 primary, November 2022 election, February 2023 mayor, April 2023 run-off/municipal election, March 2024 primary and then a November 2024 election. That’s six elections in a little over 30 months! It’s exhausting! And there’s different issues with different candidates on each ballot, and hardly any choices on each of them! They do this on purpose to confuse you, exhaust you, and count on low voter turnout. Move the municipal elections into the primary or November elections.… Read more »
Those little off year/season school board/referendum elections are a serious plague. Most don’t know about them, the supporters, ie teachers, go out in force and push through their desirable candidates and referendum supports in my neck of the woods. It really gets aggravating but on the other hand perhaps if some adults got their faces out if the sports news perhaps there would be a bigger voter turnout. One thing for sure though; I hear all sorts of howls when the tax bills come out.
It’s like PPF always said. It’s the voters. But the problem is the pols will say and promise anything to get into office and that entices many voters but once they are in office what they said they will do and what they actually do is anyone’s guess. Did anyone know what Pritzker did once in office but was mostly not mentioned by him before like transgender bathrooms and rights just a short time. after his first election. Or like Biden and his executive orders undoing most everything Trump enacted like the pipeline.
I often see urine all over the seats in the unisex bathrooms. Women voted to share bathrooms with men, and they’re getting what they voted for!
Why should people vote?
if voting made any difference, voting would be outlawed.
Democrats always win no matter what, so why bother voting?
An assigned reading in my school years was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that, more or less was about Chicago at the turn of the century. An Immigrant, Jurgis, had been confronted with selling his vote and, “. Although Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by this time to realize that it was not supposed to be right to sell your vote. However, as every one did it, and his refusal to join would not have made the slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing would have seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.” So we now… Read more »
Since we do not clean the voter rolls does “registered voters” include dead people, people that have moved etc., how accurate is that number?
When I left IL and registered in NC, IL was notified by NC that I registered in another state. Take a guess if IL removed my registration? Of course they didn’t. How else would they create extra ghost voters? In order to remove myself from the DuPage County voter rolls I had to email a signed letter to the DuPage Board of Elections. Then had to follow up online to make sure my name had been removed. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who have said good riddance to IL, how many have thought to remove their registration from… Read more »
I will have to remember to also do that.
There are currently lawsuits in Federal Courts meeting some success in making voter rolls easier to purge. The current availability for view in Illinois is incredibly and deliberately restrictive; weekdays during business hours only in Springfield. Anyone who ever voted out of a rental apartment got a mail in ballot in 2020. Mail carriers know who is or isn’t there. Sadly, I wouldn’t trust them not to vote for those who have moved.
The DuPage elections office was very cooperative, but the real problem was that they knew I was no longer an IL and did nothing until I took action.
If you know anyone who has left IL, by all means make sure that they need to remove their old voter registration ASAP.
And now you know why republicians never win!!!
Many decades of single party rule in Cook County and City of Chicago, also in the IL legislature and often including the Governor, brazenly gerrymandered districts, the symbiotic relationship between local, county, and state governments with public unions, mostly notably the CTU, it all adds up to why bother, why even pay attention. Same bullshit, different election. Combine all that with a laser focused group of perpetually aggrieved, resentful, and jealous far left that exploits low turnout to install their goofs confronting anyone who disagrees with them with accusations of (pick all applicable) “racism”, “facism”, “misogyny”, “MAGA”, “sexism”, “genderism” and… Read more »
Ungrateful illegals!
We feed them, house them, give them free debit cards, print the ballots in Spanish, and they still don’t show up!
Here’s something interesting that our governor won’t like. Didn’t JB make a large political contribution in Wisconsin for a candidate?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wisconsin-voters-deciding-whether-ban-041106760.html
Who cares…….he is part of ‘The illinois Problem’!!!!
But he is also causing problems by backing candidates in other states to further the Democratic agenda. Look at #23
https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/who-were-the-50-largest-campaign-donors-to-wisconsin-political-parties-in-2022/
As Ms Burke has hurriedly clarified, she’s pro-criminal, and not really much different from Harris. Fiorretti is Preckwinkle’s perennial shill, pretending to be viable Republican candidate for whatever election ticket-spot he occupies. For local-level Chicago elections, elected positions are usually predetermined with Chicago Machine-endorsed candidates. Our “voting” is mostly Kabuki theatre, performative without genuine consequence. The local-level Republican candidates, if they exist, are often a shill, or worst-possible candidate funded by democrats. Pritzker was largest individual funder for his Republican (unsophisticated ultra-conservative southern-Illinois farmer) opponent in last election. By all rights, Aurora Mayor Irwin should have been Republican candidate for… Read more »
Irwin was a horrible choice – Hence the ‘hayseed from Southern IL’ had no problem defeating him.
IL is lost – need to accept that reality. Subversiveness to the IL regime is possible in low turnouts though.
Most Republicans I met has a negative visceral action for Irvin. I liked Irvin, thought he was good, but others said he didn’t like him at all, seemed like a Democrat trying to sneak into a Republican race. I get where they are coming from, can’t fault him at all. It was not an organic race at all.
I always take the Dem ballot in the primaries because I vote as a subversive seeking the zaniest democrats. I know I’ll vote GOP in the general and look for the craziest opponent available.
Wasn’t this current situation the utopia Leftist Democrats have worked so long and hard for in IL? Obscenely gerrymandered districts, mail-in ballot fraud, spending huge sums on races funded in large part by crony public employee unions, using the corrupt courts to cancel out opponents even. This is IL. I see the low turnout though as a possibility to throw sand into their machinery. I suppose next Leftists Democrats will attempt to cancel out elections altogether. Like the old crime bosses in the movie ‘Casino’, why take chances?
The reality is “new machine” (Leftist Democrats) are no different than “old machine”, the dopey voter/taxpayer are just supposed fall for all the “new machine” DEI / Equity smoke screen crap and get in line….which astoundingly they do, or as is the case now are so labotomized they just stay home.
Your first move by “new machine/ old machine” to keep the peasantry “down on the farm” is to make sure 2/3 of them are functionally illiterate and control all news outlets.