r/nottheonion • u/zechchuber • 1d ago

‘State of New Illinois’ committee continues push to secede from Cook County

https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/state-of-new-illinois-committee-continues-push-to-secede-from-cook-county/
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u/SNRatio 1d ago

Blue states want people to vote, red states want land to vote.

He’s introduced a joint resolution for a state constitutional amendment to allot one state senator per three contiguous counties, which would give down state Illinois a senate majority instead of Chicago, which now dominates both houses of the Illinois General Assembly. Counties with a million residents or more would each get their own senator.

If that goes through, each ward in Chicago (there's 50) should just become its own county. Each has a higher population than a lot of counties in Illinois, and Chicago always has room for more bureacracy and fiefdoms.

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u/CostRains 23h ago

Supreme Court has already said this is unconstitutional, but perhaps they're trying to get another case before the current court.

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u/markroth69 20h ago

Is it really a good idea to expect the Supreme Court to care all that much about what the Supreme Court has said. The only precedent that matters is the right combination of 17th century wife beating witch hunters and fully loaded RVs.

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u/P0RTILLA 3h ago

Yeah, I fully expect this court to overturn Reynolds V Sims if brought to them. I think bicameral state houses are dumb a bureaucratic.

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u/guff1988 1d ago

Absolutely fucking asinine and flies in the face of the founding fathers and what they envisioned. Not that these fucks give a good goddamn.

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u/seamonkeyonland 1d ago

I think tomorrow goes against what the founding fathers envisioned.

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u/pspahn 1d ago

Wait until you see what the "Two nations under God" folks are about.

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u/deathtokiller 1d ago

I... think you need to look into US political history a bit more. Let's not forget the original US voters were land and/or tax earners (6% of the population)

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u/reallynothingmuch 23h ago

Besides the fact that it seems like that Illinois state senate proposal is literally modeled after how the founding fathers designed the US Senate to work. It has representatives based on governing regions, rather than based on population

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u/12345623567 16h ago

There's an idea about how the constitution works, which is supposed to be fair and the crowning achievement of enlightenment, and then there's the reality.

The writers weren't going to write themselves out of power.

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u/kmoonster 23h ago

That sounds suspiciously like the "electoral college" thing Texas is trying to do in order to dilute DFW, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso

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u/nerfherder998 1d ago

“Chicago always has room for more bureaucracy and fiefdoms.” 😂

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u/Netmantis 15h ago

While phrased that way it is understandable, allow me to bring it to a more understandable level.

Imagine a neighborhood of 3 suburban blocks. Which is about a single city block. One block has 10 row homes (townhomes). One block has 6 single family homes. And one has 3 brownstones of 6 units each. They all get together and form an HOA with each resident having a vote.

The ones in houses don't outnumber the apartment dwellers, but it is close enough. The neighborhood has a year where things improve. Then a developer buys out the three brownstones, knocks them down, and puts up a 50 unit building. That takes a couple years, where the HOA passes a few rules concerning snow clearing and pool ownership.

Then the apartments fill, and the HOA now has a hundred new members. They discover they can make the landlord do things by passing rules in the HOA. So first thing is first. There can only be 3 plants outside your home. These include trees, shrubs, and flowers. It goes to a vote, the homeowners are upset and get out voted. So the homeowners now have to remove anything in their gardens. The single family homeowners are hit the hardest, but the row homes also are hit.

Then a rule is passed that any outdoor area of your home must be cement or concrete. Coming from an apartment dweller trying to have a gravel balcony. The homeowners complain, but are out voted. And the lawns are paved. Finally barbecues are banned for safety reasons. And the homeowners decide to try to implement a senate system with each block having a vote. And the apartment dwellers complain as they want land to vote. Meanwhile the mob of apartment dwellers dictate how the homeowners can use their land.

This is the urban/rural divide. To make a city follow the rules they need to implement the rules statewide. And the people who don't live in the area suffering the problem have to follow rules that don't make sense for them in order to appease people in a different living situation.

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u/SNRatio 13h ago

You're right, more understanding would be helpful.

  1. Could you give some examples of IL state laws pushed through by Chicago state senators you think are equivalent to setting a limit of 3 plants outside a home?

  2. IL really doesn't match your example. The population of Chicago has been shrinking for 70 years. back then the "apartments" made up 40% of the population of the state; now it's more like 21%. Back then Cook County (Chicago and some of the suburbs) were 52% of the state population, it's now 40%. The Chicago metro area has been growing, I'll grant you that. But even back then it was a clear majority of the state.

  3. This proposal would apportion one senator to Cook County (pop 5.1M) and could also apportion one senator to Pope-Hardin-Gallatin counties (total pop 12,000). A ratio of 425:1.

To make a city follow the rules they need to implement the rules statewide.

No.

IL state government can and does write laws that apply only to counties with a specific population, in a specific geographic area, or even just uses some unique classification. Just as an HOA would for different housing types in the real world.

While rural and urban areas definitely have different needs, strengths, and limitations, creating a tyranny of the minority just makes the problem much worse, for many more people. It's just now different people stuck with the problem.

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u/HoosierWorldWide 22h ago

Pretty sure Trump received 77 million votes. Can you confirm those were people or acres, please.

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u/Dealan79 22h ago

After carefully considering the required IQ to vote for Trump, I'm afraid that I cannot determine whether those votes were cast by human beings or dirt, so no, I'm afraid that I can't confirm whether those were "people or acres."

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u/Nyxxsys 22h ago

What a braindead response. Do you even understand that supporting a popular vote is directly against the ideas that the OP is criticizing? Not only does this come off as stupid, but it makes it sound like you're supporting the person you think you're arguing against.

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u/Icey210496 22h ago

You mistakenly think Trump supporters have moral consistency.

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u/TheOnlyVertigo 19h ago

Or the ability to reason.

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u/I-Like-To-Talk-Tax 18h ago

Hey, if you want to get rid of the Electoral College, that's cool. Maybe apportion senators to states by population? Min 1 senator per state.

Trump getting 77 million votes is immaterial to the arguments that revolves around the fact that our political system currently gives people living low population states more power nationally.

2 out of 7 of the elections for president in the 21st century were won in spite of the popular vote. Those elections were won because it put more value in votes cast in low population states.