Elections are finally over, and Macon County results are in. Local Republicans have majority support, though Democrat voters are under represented due to Republican gamesmanship, technicalities, and unprepared Democrats. State law and winner-take-all voting cements the 2-party system. Worse yet, only half of local voters made it to the polls. The State goes blue, and Fed hangs in the balance. Overall, our Democracy could use some work.
Notes
All Illinois & Macon County results are unofficial until November 29th. About two dozen provisional ballots and "hundreds" of vote by mail ballots are yet to be counted, but these won't affect any results. For up-to-date vote totals see Macon County Results, WGN's Illinois Results, CNN's Illinois Results, and FiveThirtyEight's National Results.
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Majority Republican, but Dems Under Represented
Nearly all Macon County Ballots are majority Republican, with a roughly 14,000 vs 20,000 vote difference for statewide offices. However, Macon County narrowly voted in favor of the Worker's Rights Amendment (by 542 votes), which was largely opposed by conservative media outlets and GOP political figures, including the local GOP office which had a sign encouraging a NO vote on Amendment 1.
The County Board seated 12 Republicans and 3 Democrats, an 80%/20% split. For contrast, Pritzker received 13,790 votes to Bailey's 20,715, roughly a 60%/40% split. Prior to the partisan 2021 redistricting, the Macon County Board had 21 members elected from 7 districts. During the 2020-2022 term, there were 13 Republicans and 8 Democrats, a 62%/38% split.
Political games and unprepared Dems
Local Democrats voted against the Republican district map in 2021, and expressed support for a 7 district map Republican County Clerk Josh Tanner had prepared. Republicans initially proposed a 5-district map at a committee meeting on October 7th 2021, but prepared a new 5-district map a few hours before the October 14th County Board meeting, at which it would be approved. This new map was more "legally defensible" according to GOP Attorney Jerry Stocks.
Shannon Gutierrez-Seal (D) was slated for Sheriff after the June 28, 2022 Primaries, but withdrew after finding out she was not eligible, due to having pulled a Republican ballot in the primaries.
Democrats additionally slated Melverta Wilkins for Treasurer, Kathryn McAlpine for County Clerk, Jon Moore For County Board District 3, and Tony Wilkins for County Board District 5. After Republicans filed objections, all these candidates withdrew, except for Melverta Wilkins who ran as a write-in candidate. Alina Hale (D) later joined as a write-in candidate for District 5.
Local Democrats failed to get candidates on the ballot before the primaries, which opened them up to the aformentioned technicality and Republican objections. Democrats never slated any School Superintendent candidates. Republicans did not run any candidates in District 1 which covers Decatur's inner city. Bruce Pillsbury, Macon County Republican Party Chair, said nobody came forward to run as a Republican in that district, otherwise they would have run candidates.
On Macon County Ballots, Republicans were listed first for every office. Writing this on a Friday afternoon, I have not been able to reach the County Clerk's office for comment.
State Democrats passed new Illinois district maps in 2021, and they have been criticized for partisan gerrymandering. I follow local issues, so I am not prepared to comment on this.
Cementing the two parties
State law requires significantly more petition signatures for independent candidates to be on the ballot. For example, A Dem or GOP Governor candidate would require 3,250 signatures, whereas an independent would require 25,000 for the 2022 election. Andrew Weatherford (D) considered running as an independent for 5th Circuit Judge, but says he didn't because that requires five times as many petition signatures.
Winner-take-all voting means you vote for one candidate and whomever receives the most votes wins. An alternative system called Ranked Choice Voting allows voters to choose multiple candidates in the order they prefer. For example, a voter could choose a Libertarian candidate as their first choice, and a Democrat as their second choice. In this case, if the Libertarian lost, then their vote would go to the Democrat candidate.
In winner-take-all, voting third party is effectively the same as not voting in most races, because GOP & Dem candidates receive nearly all the votes. With ranked choice voting, you can safely vote third-party and still support your second favorite candidate in the event the third-party loses.
Ranked Choice Voting was approved for the 2025 municipal elections by an overwhelming majority in Evanston, Illinois this November.
Disappointing Voter Turnout
There were **71,966 registered voters in Macon County this November, yet only ***35,725 ballots were cast, or 49.6% of registered voters. Some items were under-voted on as well, with 35,725 ballots cast for Amendment 1, but only 33,322 votes counted. This difference is more noteable in the county-wide races that had no Democrat options. County Clerk Josh Tanner (R) received 28,994 of 35,725 ballots cast. County Treasurer John Jackson (R) received 27,692 votes, and Melverta Wilkins's write-in vote totals are not available yet.
Additionally, the Judicial Retention elections were undervoted by about 4,000 votes. The retention elections are yes/no and do not list the candidate's party on the ballot.
County Board races were also significantly under-voted. Each County Board District race allowed 3 votes. District 1 had no Republican candidates, and District 1 was the only district with three Democrat candidates. In District 4 8,424 ballots were cast, so 25,272 possible votes could be cast, but only 19,846 were counted (78.5%). In District 1, 10,938 votes could be cast. 5,652 were counted (51.7%).
Conclusions
Macon County votes majority Republican on almost every issue, by a reasonable margin. Democrats are under represented locally, but more accurate Dem representation wouldn't change the outcome of highly partisan County Board votes. A few partisan issues over the past few years are the disapproval of cannabis dispensaries in unincorporated areas, limiting the Health Department's authority to choose how frequently they report COVID data, declining to build a County Recycling Center, and Redistricting in 2021.
From a few interviews I've conducted, Republicans have been opposed to any property tax increases, and have expressed an interest in continuing to run the County as it has been run. Democrats have expressed more interest in finding new solutions to community issues, though have not expressed interest in property tax increases. Both have expressed interest in improving access to good jobs and some restorative justice measures.
There certainly are partisan issues in the county, and over the next two years outcomes will certainly favor the Republican position. Republicans gained a 12-9 majority on the County Board in 2018, narrowly increased the majority to 13-8 in 2020, and now have a 12-3 majority.
A significant issue in local politics is the general lack of information available about candidates. I called and emailed nearly every candidate for office in Macon County, including County Board, Sheriff, Clerk, and Treasurer. I successfully interviewed 5 Democratic candidates and 5 Republican candidates. I sent out 5 questionnaires to local candidates who said they would complete one and none were returned.
No other local candidates followed through on requests for interviews. Many candidates had no meaningful platform information available online. I wrote up two additional county board candidates from information I collected from various sources online. It was remarkably difficult to find out what policy stances the majority of candidates had.
I will continue to work on this for the 2023 Municipal election, and hopefully will have more success. I believe most voters are either casting their local ballots by name recognition or by party, and not based on clear policy positions. I believe this is a problem and am working hard to address this locally.
Please support my work with a donation on Paypal or Patreon. I have no large sponsors, so individual contributions are crucial to continuing this work.
For detailed results regarding all measures on Macon County Ballots, see my writeup of 2022 Election Results
Notes
- *** 35,725 ballots were cast for Governor. 35,729 were cast for U.S. Senator. Only 35,451 votes were counted for Governor. This number may increase slightly once provisional and mail-in-ballots are all received & counted.
Links
- For local vote totals, see Macon County Results
- Herald & Review local Red Wave
- Scherer defeats Smith
- Budzinski declares victory
- McHaney declares victory
- Illinois Election Results (wgntv)
- Illinois Election Results (cnn)
- Illinois Treasurer Results
- Illinois Judicial Results
Corrections
- I previously had a footnote about census.gov estimating about 50,000 persons 18+ in Macon County. I had calculated something incorrectly & have now removed that footnote. The estimate is closer to 80598.45 from here