Arlington Heights Daily Herald. March 23, 2024.

Editorial: Blagojevich’s impotent populism

No one was particularly surprised, not even the impeached former governor himself, with the ruling of a federal judge on Thursday that Rod Blagojevich cannot sue to block an Illinois law that forbids him from returning to public office. Yet, amid a certain sense of gratitude that we should not have to reckon with the distasteful potential of a resurrected Rod Blagojevich political career, we cannot escape sincere disappointment that he thinks he is owed one.

Blagojevich was impeached and removed from his position as governor in January 2009. Later that year, he was convicted of corruption charges that included trying to sell the appointment to a vacant U.S. Senate seat, shaking down a hospital CEO for a campaign contribution and holding up legislation related to the horse-racing industry over a contribution demand. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and served eight before being released early in 2020, thanks to a commutation from then-President Donald Trump.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich makes his way through a crowd at his Chicago home in 2020 after then-President Donald Trump commuted his prison sentence. Daily Herald File Photo

In all that time, Blagojevich has insisted he was a victim of the political system. He has never shown remorse nor apologized for the acts that got him kicked out of office and convicted of crimes in a duly established, transparent court system. And yet, though he previously said he didn’t have any specific plans to seek office again, he thought he should have the right, no matter what.

“The people should be able to decide who they want or don’t want to represent them — not federal judges or establishment politicians who are afraid of governors who fight for the people,” a Blagojevich spokesman wrote on X following U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger’s 10-page dismissal. And, yes, the people’s voice through the ballot box is the foundation of our democratic process.

But clearly such reasoning extends only so far. Even the framers of both the Illinois and the U.S. constitutions acknowledged that some at least minimal age and citizenship standards must limit the people’s ability to choose their leaders, and both constitutions also include restrictions forbidding officials removed by impeachment from continuing to seek public office. So, it is a nonsensical stretch to declare that an impeached, removed and criminally convicted former official should have unfettered access to what the U.S. Constitution calls “any office of honor, trust or profit.”

Seeger’s stinging rejection of that claim feasts on the low-hanging fruit of Blagojevich’s impotent case with an almost unseemly glibness that extends even to a quotation from Dr. Seuss. One longs for Blagojevich to get the message and heed the judge’s Seuss-inspired intonation for him and his lawyers to “Go. Go. GO! I don’t care how.”

But there is another issue here even more important than a cleverly worded scolding. What we really need is for Blagojevich, and the rest of us, to reject the temptation of simple-minded populist-sounding rants and to respect basic standards of qualification that the people, their constitutions and their elected officials have set for people seeking positions of legal authority.

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Chicago Sun-Times. March 23, 2024.

Editorial: Didn’t vote on Tuesday? You weren’t alone. Here’s how to start making the Illinois primary a bigger draw.

Voter turnout is always low in primary elections, and Tuesday was an extreme example. Ranked choice voting is one idea that could boost turnout and decrease partisanship and negative campaigning.

No matter your views on the results of the March 19 primary election, there’s one eye-opening take-away that demands action: the abysmal turnout of just 1 in 5 eligible voters.

Blame it on general voter apathy, lack of competition in the presidential race — a Biden vs Trump rematch has been a foregone conclusion for weeks — chilly weather or something else. But Tuesday’s 20.24% citywide turnout was a glaring example of the political reality that primary elections just don’t draw enough voters. Despite critical races at the congressional, county and local level, turnout fell far short of the level that anyone who cares about democracy and civic engagement would hope for.

Not moved by high-brow arguments about democracy? We’ll put it more bluntly: Not voting is another way of saying you’re cool with letting other people make decisions for you.

It’s great for Illinois to be a model for voting access. It’s even better if our state can become a model for voter participation.

One suggestion we’ve heard would be to move the Illinois presidential primary to Super Tuesday to pique voter interest. Given Illinois’ large, diverse population, why shouldn’t our state be in the thick of things and play a bigger role in determining party nominees while races are still mostly up in the air?

“Competition is a big driver of turnout, ” as Deb Otis of the nonpartisan reform organization FairVote pointed out to us.

A switch would mean Illinois voters casting their ballots in February or March, a potential drawback. The potential for bad weather was one reason lawmakers voted in 2010 to move Illinois’ primary back to the third Tuesday in March, a schedule that had been in place since the 1970s until the short-lived change to February in 2007.

But weather shouldn’t be an excuse. It makes sense for lawmakers to consider the idea.

Up next: Ranked choice voting

At the extreme of systemic reforms is compulsory voting, which Australia and a small number of other countries have adopted. Supporters say that government gains legitimacy when more people vote, and that voting is an important civic responsibility, not just a right. Critics point out that freedom is central to democracy — and freedom includes the right, however much others might disagree, not to vote.

According to a Pew Research poll from May 2021, two-thirds of respondents in Germany, France and the United Kingdom said it is “very” or “somewhat” important for the government to make voting mandatory. Just 51% of Americans said the same. Count us among the 49% who are opposed to the idea.

A reform that we strongly support is ranked choice voting, which two states — Alaska and Maine — and 50 municipalities have adopted, including New York City, Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Evanston voters passed a referendum in favor of ranked choice voting for their municipal elections in 2022. In November this year, voters in Oregon and Nevada will decide whether to adopt RCV, and the idea has earned bipartisan support among voters in states and municipalities as varied as Virginia; Utah; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Minneapolis.

“It’s the fastest-growing reform in the country so far,” Otis said.

An Illinois task force is expected to issue a report soon on how to potentially implement ranked choice voting in our state’s presidential primary in 2028. We urge legislators, policy makers and election officials to consider RCV for state, county and local elections as well.

Ranked choice voting could potentially do more than boost engagement and turnout. It could reduce partisanship and negative campaigning; give candidates of color more opportunities to win public office; encourage more candidates to run; reduce “strategic voting” for candidates that are less preferable but more likely to win; and provide other benefits, according to the group Better Elections for Illinois, which is advocating for ranked choice voting.

With ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference, which ensures that people can support long-shot candidates without fear that they’re wasting a ballot. Candidates with the least support are eliminated in successive rounds of vote-counting, so only candidates with broad support end up winning — which supporters say eliminates “crazies” at the furthest ends of the political spectrum.

There are other reforms worth considering, such as cumulative voting, which Illinois used for state House races until 1980. With cumulative voting, voters cast as many votes as there are seats. But unlike winner-take-all systems, voters are not limited to one vote per candidate. Instead, they can put multiple votes on one or more candidates, which, among other benefits, allows voters who are in the minority to pool votes on one candidate to boost his or her chances of winning election.

These are all reforms Chicago and Illinois could consider to flip the script and turn apathy into engagement.

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Bloomington Pantagraph. March 22, 2024.

Editorial: Primary voting system is broken

Undoing something that’s become an ingrained habit is a tough sell. But if we want anything to change, we have to confront realities.

Our present primary voting system is broken.

An Illinois primary drawing 10% of possible ballots is cause for celebration. A significant reason for that has to be the number of uncontested races.

Why go to the trouble of voting if we’re just rubber-stamping the decision of a select group of party leaders? However much the faces change, the ideas are inevitably the same.

We may be ignoring the most apparent alternative. If we want to attract the best of us to represent the rest of us, the deciding factor is turnout at the polls. If 8% of us are selecting our representatives, we have to be doing something wrong.

So we need to attract new candidates. Politics doesn’t strike many of us as a good path right now.

To change that, we need to make being a candidate feel less like the drudgery of public duty and more like the joy of public service.

If we want the voters to be interested, we have to start by nominating interesting people. If we’re so weary of voting, we need to present candidates for whom people want to cast ballots. We have to admit we’re sick of 51-49 legislative district voting.

We have to be willing to ignore party lines. Presently, we vote on the side of whatever flag our party flies. We’re not really allowed otherwise in primaries like the one in Illinois. We’ve allowed those on the fringes to define the core of our side’s ideology.

If we want a difference, we need to let new voices in on the discussion. We don’t have to throw out all the incumbents, however great an idea that might seem. We’re not equipped to rationally make a harder turn toward the problematic areas on the fringes.

Unfortunately, we can’t make this change before 2040, let alone November of 2024.

But we need to decide what kind of breads and circuses we’re willing to consume. We can continue as we’re going, with the same ideas dressed up in new faces. That’s the easiest path. But if we think change will be too difficult to attempt, we’re not only accepting the status quo, we’re embracing it.

Or we can boldly challenge ourselves into the unknown. What happens when new officeholders become public figures? Their ideas get a little more bounce. That happened in 2006.

They might be terrible. But you know what else? They could be fantastic. At least they’d be different, which seems to be the governing body we all desire most: Something different.

END