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The Daily Illini
By Maggie Dunphy
February 27, 2003
The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill last week
that
would allow county boards to elect members through cumulative
voting.
Through cumulative voting, county voters would be able to cast
all
three of their votes for a single county board candidate if
they
wanted to do so. The bill also would allow counties to conduct
advisory referendums to decide how board members would be
elected and how many members would be elected.
"This bill allows counties to do what they want to do," said
Rep.
Elizabeth Coulson, R-Glenview, who voted in favor of the
bill.
"Our state is so diverse," Coulson said. "It allows each county
to
elect members as they see fit."
The bill applied to all counties with multimember boards, which
includes Champaign County.
Rep. Paul D. Froehlich, R-Schaumburg, signed on as co-sponsor
of the
bill after it was discussed in committee.
"I'd like to see counties be able to experiment if they so
choose,"
Froehlich said.
Champaign County Board member Kevin Brumback disagreed with the
bill.
"The problem I have is that we as voters each have one vote,
and I
have a feeling this will allow blocks of people to push behind
single
candidates and get them elected," he said.
"I just think this is a bad, bad idea," Brumback said. "This is
going
to skew the election."
There was about 20 minutes of debate on the House floor,
Froehlich
said, but the bill passed 73-40.
"It's an interesting idea," said Rep. Mike Boland, D- Moline,
who
voted for the bill. "In particular, I think it will affect
those
counties where one candidate is predominant."
If passed, the new way of voting could benefit minority
candidates,
Froehlich said.
"If it were adopted by a county, it would give minorities,
either
racial or political, the opportunity to get at least one
candidate
elected," he said. "Now the minority is empowered."
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Carbondale, was originally against the bill
but
voted in favor of it after it was redrafted.
Bost said some people have concerns about cumulative voting
because
it "brings in a lot of deal cutting." If one community wanted a
certain person elected, it could make for a hard campaign to
get the
person "bulleted" in, Bost said. A bullet is when a candidate
receives all three votes from one voter.
With this form of campaigning, "they can sway the majority,"
Bost
said.
"The few people I called on the McHenry County Board did not
want
cumulative voting," said Rep. Mark H. Beaubien Jr., R-
Wauconda.
Beaubien voted against the bill.
The Illinois General Assembly had cumulative voting until the
early
1980s. Bost said until this time, each district had three
representatives and one senator who ran at large within the
district.
Some representatives benefited from cumulative voting while
others
were disadvantaged by it, depending on each representative's
community support.
"You can have one area overload it," Bost said.
Despite potential problems with cumulative voting, Bost
supported the
bill.
"It is up to the individual counties whether to enforce
cumulative
voting," Bost said. "This bill isn't going to force county
boards to
use cumulative voting, so it's still a local control
issue."
The Illinois Senate will look at the bill during session
Thursday. |
