At least seven more Illinois counties will ask their voters on Nov. 3 whether to pursue a new state that leaves out Cook County. Cook County, which includes Chicago, had about 1.1 million Black residents in the 2020 census. That is the part of Illinois the proposal would cut away.
The questions are advisory. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has said the state constitution does not let counties secede, so a yes vote changes no borders. It does something narrower: it asks county boards to correspond with other counties about separating. In every county that has asked since 2020, 33 in all, voters have said yes.
The 2026 ballots include Coles, Gallatin, Hamilton, Henderson, Macoupin, Monroe and Saline counties, according to Voz. Blavity reports that as many as 11 counties are voting this cycle.
Who lives in the part being left out
Chicago holds roughly two in three of Cook County’s Black residents: 819,470 in the 2020 census, by one tally of census data. Illinois lost about 57,000 Black residents between 2010 and 2020, and Latinos passed Black residents as the largest group in Chicago, Cook County and the state in that count. Black Illinoisans remain concentrated in the county the ballot questions name.
Backers do not frame it in racial terms. Loret Newlin, who leads the Illinois Separation campaign, told Blavity: “This is our lived experience. We are ignored. We are not taken into consideration when they’re making a lot of the laws that hurt us.” State Rep. Brad Halbrook, a Republican who has urged the creation of a 51st state, named the SAFE-T Act, which ended cash bail, and the Protect Illinois Communities Act, the state’s assault weapons ban. “They don’t see that anything’s going to change for the positive,” he said.
Gas taxes and firearm licensing rules are also among the grievances Newlin’s group cites.
Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has called the effort a “stunt.” When Madison County put the question on its 2024 ballot, he said: “The idea that someplace in Illinois wants to kick out another place in Illinois should not be on the ballot.” Indiana lawmakers have proposed absorbing the counties that vote yes, an offer Pritzker rejected.
The 33 earlier votes produced no legal change. Results from this year’s counties will be public on election night, Nov. 3.
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