Illinois House of Representatives - Changes To The House

Changes To The House

Before the Cutback Amendment to the state constitution in 1980, the state was divided into 59 "legislative districts", each of which elected three representatives, yielding a House of 177 members. This unusual system was even more distinctive in that the election was conducted by a modified form of cumulative voting: each individual voter was given three legislative votes to cast, and could cast either one vote each for three candidates, all three votes for one candidate (known as a "bullet vote"), or 1½ votes each for two candidates. A change adopted in the Illinois Constitution of 1970 formalized the arrangement by which each party would run only two candidates in each district. Thus, in most districts, only four candidates were running for three seats, guaranteeing not only that there would be a single loser, but that each party would have significant representation—a minimum of one-third of the seats—in the House.

The Cutback Amendment was proposed to abolish this system, and since its passage, representatives have been elected from 118 single-member constituencies formed by dividing the 59 Senate districts in half. This was done partly to save money, and partly because the system was so unusual (no other state had anything remotely close to it) that it was seen as an embarrassing oddity.

Since the adoption of the Cutback Amendment, there have been proposals by some major political figures in Illinois to bring back multi-member districts. A task force led by former governor Jim Edgar and former federal judge Abner Mikva issued a report in 2001 calling for the revival of cumulative voting, in part because it appears that such a system increases the representation of racial minorities in elected office. The Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1995 that the multi-member districts elected with cumulative voting produced better legislators. Others have argued that the now-abandoned system provided for greater "stability" in the lower house.