Continuing a recent trend, a group of Illinois counties will cast votes on whether or not they should seek to form a state separate from Chicago and Cook County.
According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, a total of seven counties will cast ballots this election cycle on whether or not they should coordinate with other counties in exploring the idea of severing ties with Cook County and forming a new state.
Those counties include Iroquois County, which is located just to the south of the Chicago area.
A cluster of counties near St. Louis, including Calhoun, Greene, Jersey, and Madison, will also cast ballots on the issue. They’ll be joined by Clinton County and Perry County, both of which are also in southern Illinois.
Here is the exact language that will appear on ballots in those seven counties:
“Shall the board of (the county) correspond with the boards of other counties of Illinois, outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”
If those counties vote in the affirmative on the advisory question, they will join a large group that have already passed similar measures. In 2020, at least 21 counties voted in favor of holding secession discussions, and those counties were joined by several more in the 2022 election cycle.
Local
The reasoning behind the referendums, according to supporters, is that the city of Chicago and Cook County have a sizable impact on the policies enacted by the state legislature, and rural counties share different interests that are not being represented by the actions of the General Assembly.
Only Congress has the power to create new states, but according to the Constitution Center, there has never been specific agreement on how that process should take place. Generally states have been tasked with crafting a constitution, and then with applying for admission to the Congress.
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On certain occasions, states have been created out of territory that previously belonged to another state, notably with Maine in 1820 and West Virginia in 1863.
In the first instance, Massachusetts consented to the formation of Maine, but in the second, West Virginia was admitted during the Civil War despite Virginia being a part of the Confederacy.
Still, many legal experts have expressed skepticism that such an effort could ever be successful. That group includes Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who penned a letter to the state’s attorney of Jersey County on the issue in 2023.
“The Illinois Constitution of 1970 does not grant non-home-rule counties the power to secede from the state of Illinois,” he found.
He also held that the state’s Election Code does not contain provisions allowing counties the power to hold binding referendums on whether or not they can secede from Illinois.
Raoul further argued the admissions clause of the U.S. Constitution would prohibit a subdivision of a state to break away without the state’s consent, and that Congressional approval would also be required.
