Obliterating the last remaining lie of the direct election opponents

“You people wouldn’t always be resorting to perverting Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment if you paid attention to the actual 10.” -- Me

Defenders of a failed status-quo whined for years that we couldn’t allow Republican primary voters to have a vote again for the Illinois GOP’s governing board because we would get Democrats on our state central committee.

Of course this was always just a manufactured lie. And the hacks who parroted that phony talking point could never explain how that would ever realistically happen.

Further, the Illinois GOP had direct elections for the members of the state central committee prior to 1986 (the same voting right every Illinois Democrat STILL enjoys in their state party) and there is absolutely zero evidence Democrat infiltration was ever an issue for the Illinois GOP when Republican primary voters had a voice.

In truth it’s our cockamamie current system, the one forced down our throats by a handful of old party bosses back in 1986 which actually HAS put Democrats on our state central committee.

But it’s worse than that. Over a quarter of the 17 current members of the state central committee publicly endorsed career left-wing Democrat Richard Irvin for governor in 2022. National Committeeman Richard Porter did too.

That embarrassing fiasco only ended because Republican primary voters DID have a direct vote for that office. Despite his campaign spending a record $50 million, Irvin finished a very distant third in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary.

And anyone who thinks Richard Irvin would have done better than Darren Bailey did against Democrat incumbent JB Pritzker in the November general election that year is dreaming. A lot of Republicans would have simply stayed home, and Democrats (who far outnumber Republicans in Illinois) would have simply stuck with the incumbent Democrat who is at least honest enough to keep the ‘D’ by his name.

The point is, we don’t hear the “we have to keep Republican voters disenfranchised in their own party or we’ll get Democrats” nonsense anymore.

It would appear that even the most craven party pooh-bahs recognize that lie won’t fly anymore – not after a sizeable chunk of the current state central committee enthusiastically welcomed a career Democrat to utilize the top line on the Republican ballot to seek the highest state office.

The only remaining “argument” I hear now from purported Republicans who apparently hate the idea of Republicans voting, is along the lines of: “Our current system rewards the precinct committeepersons who do all the work.”

That’s absolute hogwash. It’s just another blatant lie.

In truth, our current system doesn’t reward precinct committeepersons, it makes a mockery of those volunteers.

A simple example will illustrate.

Let’s say you have two candidates running for state central committeeperson in a particular congressional district. Those picks are made every four years. And let’s say our hypothetical congressional district covers 12 counties.

When Republican party bosses robbed our vote in 1986, they created a new system for the Republican party only. GOP state central committeepersons would no longer be directly elected by Republican primary voters every four years.

Instead, they tacked the selection process for state central committee members onto the county conventions which every county GOP organization was already holding every two years where county parties choose their county party officials.

So each county GOP, in all 102 Illinois counties, holds a county GOP convention every two years on the same night, 30 days after the Primary. But there is a pick for state central committeepersons at those county conventions only every four years.

At first glance, that might seem like a reasonable system.

The county conventions are after all fine and logical for COUNTY party operations. Precinct committeepersons (PCs) are, and have always been, directly elected by Republican primary voters. Those directly elected PCs then comprise the county party central committee. And that county central committee assembles every two years at the county convention to elect a county chair and other county party officers.

That’s all fine and proper. That system parallels how every U.S. corporation functions.

The shenanigans only started when state party organizational matters were force-fed into completely separate legal entities, i.e., the county parties.

Under our current system, Republican primary voters directly elect the members of the county GOP’s central committee. Again, that’s proper, and that’s been the case no doubt since the Republican Party was first formed back in the 1800’s.

But what’s absurd is the fact Republican primary voters today DON’T get a vote for the governing board of the big dog, the state party.

A perfect analogy would be a corporation telling its shareholders, “we’re only going to give you a vote for the board members of one of our small subsidiaries. We don’t trust you with a vote for the board members of the parent company where all of the really big decisions are made.”

Would you buy stock in that company?

Of course you wouldn’t. But that’s the problem when a tiny handful of self-dealing insiders are allowed to co-opt the rational functioning of an organization. Our current system was designed solely by, and solely for, the party bosses.

Actually “design” gives them too much credit. It’s very clear no one really thought through our current system. It was obviously just slapped together by some arrogant party bosses who retaliated in petty fashion when some grassroots Republicans had the nerve to beat boss-backed candidates for state central committee seats. That’s the only reason our vote was stolen – as this piece further explains.

But wait, it gets even worse.

Let’s go back to our original example of two people running in a hypothetical 12 county congressional district for the state central committeeperson spot.

One candidate is already a county GOP chair and he or she is looking for another title, a bigger one at the state party. The other candidate is a dedicated Republican, but not a GOP county chair.  

Now let’s say half the precincts in the county where the GOP county chair lives are vacant. In other words, no Republican bothered to run for precinct committeeperson in those precincts. Republican voters in those vacant precincts are therefore not represented by a PC at the county convention. Whether or not the county chair deliberately did his or her best to ensure a high vacancy rate for self-serving reasons is a question only that person could answer.

In any case, that 50 percent vacancy rate in counties across the state is far from uncommon.

So here is what happens on county convention night when the state central committee is also picked. The candidate who is already a GOP county chair is almost guaranteed to win his or her own county by a lot. If the PCs picked the person to be county party chair, they are most likely going to stay with that person for the state central committeeperson pick too.

But let’s be conservative. Let’s say the GOP county chair gets only 75 percent of the weighted vote of the elected PCs from his or her own county who attend the county convention.

What happens next is that county chair now gets an enormous windfall of weighted votes from the vacant precincts. No one was actually at the county convention to cast those votes, but they are cast anyway. The GOP county chair candidate gets 75 percent of them. Again, these are just made-up votes. No representative of the Republican voters in that precinct was there to cast them.

Votes are just being awarded by formula, solely based on how others voted in other parts of the county.

In other words, one candidate for state central committeeperson starts out the “election” with an enormous weighted vote comprised of votes which are in fact not even legitimate votes. And the higher the PC vacancy rate, the higher the number of these made-up votes.

The horrible disincentives to party building inherent in this cockamamie system should be blatantly obvious to anyone.

Now suppose there is a dedicated PC six counties over in the same congressional district. This person worked hard for two years and increased the Republican vote in her precinct substantially, from 80 to 100 votes. This PC proudly shows up at her county party convention ready to cast her 100 weighted votes on behalf of the Republican voters she represents. Oh, and she supports the other candidate running for state central committeeperson.

So what happens? Well on county convention night our hard working PC has her legitimate, but modest, 100 weighted votes for her candidate completely swamped by the enormous number of weighted votes being “cast” from perhaps scores of vacant precincts for the other candidate six counties away, the GOP county chair. Again, those vacant precinct votes are being cast solely by formula. No one was present to legitimately cast them.

And yet this is the corrupt system a few still want to preserve for our Illinois Republican Party. I asked a member of the state central committee last year why the hell vacant precincts are voted when clearly these are just manufactured votes and wholly illegitimate. He responded with some gibberish about how Cook County would have too much power if the fake votes weren’t counted in counties other than Cook.

When the people who want to keep a failed system can’t even intelligently explain it, we have a huge problem.

The fact is our current system not only plays our hardworking PCs for fools, but it is also an insult to democracy itself and the core American principle of one-person, one-vote.

Are there any current members of the state central committee who would not be there today but for this easily rigged system where they benefited from “votes” cast by formula and not by any actual person? Yes, in my humble opinion there are, and in my estimation more than one.

And by the way, none of what I’ve described here is some big secret. The formula for counting the votes of Republicans who aren’t even represented at a county convention is hiding in plain sight. It’s in the Bylaws of the Illinois Republican Party in Article II, Paragraph A.2, which provides in relevant part:

“The ‘weighted vote’ for vacant precincts, and precincts not represented at the county conventions by elected precinct committeemen, shall be allocated to each candidate for State Central Committeeman based on the proportion of weighted votes the candidate(s) received from the elected precinct committeemen present at that county convention.”

Smart PCs know damn good and well it’s all a sham. That’s why PCs are already standing up in support of restoring direct elections.

If you want to actually RESPECT our hardworking PCs, and ALL Republican voters for that matter, we invite you to join the growing list of direct election supporters HERE.