Seven More Illinois Counties Set Up November Vote on Leaving the State

Seven more counties in Illinois have joined the push to consider leaving and creating a new state.Since 2020, 33 counties have approved measures to explore seceding from Illinois. The county boards of Coles, Gallatin, Hamilton, Henderson, Macoupin, Monroe, and Saline recently voted to send a nonbinding measure to the ballot for voters in November, bringing the total to one-third of the state’s counties that have approved such measures. The language of the referendum asks, “Shall the Board of (the county) correspond with the boards of the other counties of Illinois outside of Cook County about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state, and to seek admission to the union as such, subject to the approval of the people.”One of the organizations behind the push to leave, New Illinois, says the group wants to create a “NEW State free from a tyrannical form of government, where residents will be able to experience a government representing their Constitutional Rights.” The leaders of the movement argue that the counties considering leaving in the southern part of the state are too different culturally and economically from Chicago. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which lays out the requirements for creating a new state, reads, “New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.”New Illinois argues it is following the “model” of West Virginia, which was recognized as a state in 1863 after 39 Virginia counties voted to form their own state during the Civil War. Most of the counties that have voted to explore the idea of leaving are largely rural, downstate counties that voted for the Republican presidential candidates in recent elections and have Republican-controlled county boards. One county, Madison, is a Republican-leaning county, though it is more suburban than rural. A Republican representative, Brad Halbrook, has been pushing for a separation from Illinois for years. In 2019, Mr. Halbrook filed a resolution to ask the U.S. Congress to separate portions of Illinois and create a new state. During an “Open Government” event, Mr. Halbrook argued that Chicago residents should support separation so they “can keep all that extra money, to bail out your pension system, to bail out your debt.” He argued that the push to leave the state is based on genuine grievances about immigration, abortion, and gun ownership.Mr. Halbrook has repeatedly introduced legislation that would establish a commission in Illinois to explore the idea of redrawing the state’s border with Indiana, where lawmakers have already passed legislation to explore changing its border. If voters approve the nonbinding resolutions to leave, several steps must be taken before secession happens. Illinois’ government would have to approve their departure. Governor JB Pritzker has dismissed the chances of counties leaving the state. Speaking to reporters in August 2025, Mr. Pritzker said, “If you want to leave the state, I would want you to stay, I’d like you to get involved in making it a better place by working together with us.”“But if you want to leave, then get up and move. There’s no chance that you’re going to pick up a county and have it join another state,” he said. Mr. Pritzker told NBC Chicago that he has treated “the voters who didn’t vote for me the same way I have treated voters who voted for me.”New Illinois shared the quote on X and wrote, “Yep, he’s screwing everyone pretty evenly!”Members of Illinois’ legislature, where Democrats have a supermajority, have largely opposed the push to leave the state. Illinois’s attorney general, Kwame Raoul, also poured cold water on the idea of the discontented counties leaving, saying in a memo, “It is my opinion that non-home-rule counties … do not have the authority to secede from the state of Illinois and join another state. Accordingly, any referendum on the issue of county secession would have no binding legal effect.”If the secession referendums pass and Illinois approves the departure from the state, the U.S. Congress would have to pass a bill and have the president sign it.

Seven More Illinois Counties Set Up November Vote on Leaving the State

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