How Illinois Democrats Game the Vote

N ew York City’s move to give 800,000 noncitizens the right to vote is the latest example of a national effort by Democratic partisans to win elections by gerrymandering the ballot box under the fashionable guise of expanding access to voting.

A closer look at Democrats’ “expanding voter access” efforts shows a program designed to enfranchise, register, and turn out individuals who are likely to vote Democratic, while ignoring and discouraging those who are not.

For example, Illinois, where I serve as a state representative, has automatic voter registration. If you file for certain types of welfare, you are automatically registered to vote. If you file for unemployment benefits, you are automatically registered to vote. If you interact with the secretary of state’s office on various issues, you are automatically registered to vote.

Harmless, even praiseworthy, one might think. But the Democrats conveniently left out a whole set of other activities. For instance, you are not automatically registered to vote if you go through a background check to receive a Firearms Owner Identification (FOID) card, which you need to possess firearms in Illinois. Similarly, if you go through a background check to get a concealed-carry license, you are not automatically registered to vote.

And Democrats in Illinois haven’t been content to stop there. A majority of House Democrats voted to give incarcerated felons the right to vote last year. To most common-sense observers, giving people who are serving time for vicious crimes such as rape and murder, as well as non-violent crimes such as public corruption or voter fraud, the power to shape our laws seems foolish.

In another example, Illinois is one of 20 states with same-day voter registration, meaning you can register to vote and vote on Election Day. Whether wise or unwise, this idea at least seems straightforward, right? But when Democrats originally crafted the legislation, they made sure that in highly populated counties, you could walk into any polling place to register and vote, while in very rural counties, you could register only at the county clerk’s office. That means that in rural counties, which are typically Republican, you will likely have to drive to register, whereas in urban counties, which generally are more Democratic, you could possibly walk.

For example, in rural Shelby County, it could mean driving nearly 30 miles to register. Perhaps not coincidentally, President Trump won Shelby County with 57 percent of the vote in 2020. But Democrats’ voter-registration efforts aren’t about expanding voting access. Instead, they are an attempt to tip the balance toward a particular group of voters.

And these efforts aren’t limited to voter registration. Their self-interested approach extends to choosing which people they encourage to vote.

In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois Democrats passed legislation requiring county clerks to send a vote-by-mail application to every individual who had voted in the 2018 general election. Why 2018? Because it was a year with generationally high Democratic turnout. County clerks didn’t have to mail applications to those who had voted in 2016, when turnout was high for both parties, or in 2014, when a Republican won the Illinois governor’s race.

No, Democrats muscled through legislation under which applications were mailed to those who had voted in 2018, because they thought that would be the best way to maximize the Democratic turnout. Illinois Democrats also recognized Election Day as a holiday for state employees, thus ensuring that public-sector workers, the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s field organization and a consistent voting bloc, would have plenty of time for electioneering on Election Day.

Democrats also passed a bill that gives high-schoolers a two-hour free pass out of school to vote. These students can vote by mail, they can vote early, and they can vote before or after school. They have 40 days to vote, but for some reason we need to give this age group an extra opportunity. Would they have passed this if they thought high-schoolers were more likely to vote Republican?

The same party that advocates “soft on crime” laws for younger folks because their brains aren’t fully developed until 25 is pushing for letting 16-year-olds vote. But this illogical thinking makes sense once you realize it is merely an effort to increase the Democrats’ base. The same goes for their push for allowing noncitizens to vote in certain elections.

Yet another example: Last year Illinois Democrats passed “vote by jail,” ensuring that jails will be polling places for people awaiting trial. People in jail already had the same no-excuse vote-by-mail options that all Illinois voters have, but that wasn’t good enough. So instead, Democrats focused on making special accommodations for people in jail. Hypothetically, say someone is driving drunk and smashes into a minivan, injuring a family of four. Those four people in the minivan will be taken to a hospital, while the drunk driver is transported to a polling location. Now how is that fair?

If you are concerned about voting rights for people who find themselves in tough spots, maybe we should start with hospitals, not jails. Hospitals tend to have older people in them. And those older people tend to vote more Republican.

I’m all for making it easier to vote but harder to cheat. And if Democrats are too, I invite them to join me in making every nursing home and every senior living center a polling place. Maybe every small-business owner should be registered to vote when they get their license. Perhaps everyone who buys a boat or applies for a concealed-carry license should be registered to vote. Maybe we should ensure that no one lives more than a few miles from a polling location. But they won’t do these things because Democrats are just posturing that this is about expanding voting.

Whether it is giving voting rights to felons in Illinois or changing mail-in-ballot rules in Pennsylvania, Democrats are aggressively using legal and policy tools to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor.

When Democrats sanctimoniously pretend to care about expanding voter participation, remember that it’s just the marketing spin they put on their pursuit of raw political power.