Editorial Roundup: Illinois
Arlington Heights Daily Herald. January 31, 2024.
Editorial: BOE decision has value beyond whether Trump could remain on state’s primary ballot
The Illinois State Board of Elections unanimously voted on Tuesday to leave former President Donald Trump on the ballot for president in the state’s March 19 primary. Capitol News Illinois/Andrew Campbell
It is gratifying to say that the Illinois State Board of Elections made the right decision Tuesday in allowing former President Donald Trump to stay on the Illinois primary ballot. But it is not the board’s decision that brings some encouragement so much as how it was made, by unanimous vote based on the members’ interpretation of their authority as a board.
Supporters of removing Trump complained that the board was “ducking” a responsibility to determine whether the former president should be disqualified because he supported an insurrection against the United States on Jan. 6, 2021. That argument requires concurrence on two key points — one, that what happened at the Capitol that day amounted to an insurrection, and, two, that a state board of elections has the authority to make that determination and rule a candidate unqualified to receive votes for office.
On the first, even some Republicans on the board acknowledged that the Jan. 6 events amounted to an attempt to overthrow an official action of the United States government. But on the second, all members agreed there is at least a question of whether they have the authority to disqualify a candidate on those grounds.
That question, of course, is about to be determined by the United States Supreme Court when it takes up the issue next week in a review of a challenge to the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify Trump from that state’s ballot.
The Illinois elections board certainly could have reached a similar conclusion to Colorado’s, but that would at best have been a Pyrrhic victory. For, declaring Trump unqualified not only could be overruled by a pending U.S. Supreme Court action but also would further deepen both the political divide separating voters today and the skepticism many Republican voters hold toward the integrity of our institutions.
Call it “ducking” if you will, but the BOE decision removes the justification for suspicion about the board’s motives and assures skeptics that appropriate lines of institutional authority are established and followed.
This issue was further complicated by the even split between Democrats and Republicans on the eight-member BOE. A 4-4 vote on the ballot question — a possibility all too imaginable in today’s partisan politics — would surely have damaged our political environment still further.
Instead, we have a situation in which the Republican retired judge who advised the board made it clear that he considers Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 insurrectionist, and at least one Republican on the board itself echoed the sentiment.
“I want it to be clear that this Republican believes that there was an insurrection on Jan. 6,” said Catherine McCrory. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on Jan. 6.”
Bold declarations such as these from Republicans do more to help the cause of our discourse, in fact, than any potentially impotent statement on the former president’s qualification to seek office. An illusory show of political moxie by Democrats would surely have only damaged that cause.
It is the Supreme Court that will determine the ability of state boards to disqualify ballot candidates on the basis of accusations of federal crimes. It likely will fall eventually to that court as well to determine whether this candidate is qualified to seek the presidency. The state board of elections could only have complicated these simple truths and disrupted our political interactions in the process.
BOE’s overwhelming, unanimous statement avoids that result.
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Chicago Sun-Times. February 1, 2024.
Editorial: Measles outbreak shows the importance of getting kids vaccinated
None of the 23 measles cases in the U.S. between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23 were in Illinois. But the first measles cases since 2019 were reported in Cook County last year, and Illinois has seen an alarming uptick in the number of schools with low vaccination rates.
Measles were declared eradicated from the U.S. over two decades ago in 2000.
Since then, there have been sporadic cases of the highly contagious disease, which mostly affects children. The statistics have gotten worse in recent years, highlighting the potentially dangerous impact of vaccine hesitancy.
The number of reported measles cases across the country rose from 49 in 2021 to 121 in 2022, then fell to 58 in 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some of those cases from the latter part of the year have contributed to the latest outbreak, raising alarm bells at the CDC.
None of the 23 confirmed measles cases between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23 were in Illinois. That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear from the potentially deadly viral infection, which has been raging globally.
There were at least four measles cases recorded in Cook County last year, the first since 2019, and herd immunity levels in schools have fallen within the last few years, a CBS 2 analysis of data from the Illinois State Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools found .
Statewide, the number of under-vaccinated schools — schools in which vaccination rates were lower than the 95% recommended by the CDC — jumped 77%, from 497 in 2019 to 882 by the start of the 2022 school year, according to the CBS 2 analysis
The news has us seeing red, and we’re not just talking about spots that come with measles.
It is frustrating enough that so many Americans refused, and still refuse, to get vaccinated against COVID-19, putting their well-being and others’ health at risk.
Parents who put their children in harm’s way by not getting them vaccinated for the coronavirus, measles or other illnesses are only exacerbating the problem of allowing infectious diseases to spread unnecessarily.
The recent measles cases in the northeast were mostly children and adolescents who had not received a vaccine, a CDC alert issued to health care providers said.
The good news: The majority of Americans, 88%, say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, a Pew Research Center survey from last year revealed.
The bad news: There is a smaller majority of those who feel that children should be vaccinated in order to attend public schools than in previous years and the percentage who say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children also jumped up to 28%, compared to 16% five years ago.
The rise in measles cases clearly shows that education must continue, to convince mothers and fathers that vaccines are vital to keeping their children, and his or her peers, from becoming seriously ill — or even worse, dying.
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Champaign News-Gazette. February 2, 2024.
Editorial: Illinois ‘insurrection’ ballot scrum just a sideshow
Discretion is often the better part of valor. So, in that context, the Illinois State Board of Elections this week decided to leave it to the courts to decide whether Donald Trump’s name should be stricken from the state’s March 19 presidential primary ballot.
In that vein, it would be good if the U.S. Supreme Court would address that ballot eligibility issue forthrightly and soon. Oral arguments are scheduled for Feb. 8.
The state elections board voted unanimously, concluding on the basis of legal precedent that it lacked the standing to address the issue of whether Trump should be disqualified from holding the presidency under the U.S. Constitution’s “insurrection clause.”
That refers to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that was aimed at Southerners who tried to destroy the Union during the Civil War.
The “insurrection” issue refers to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection/riot on Capitol Hill that disrupted the Electoral College vote count underway in Congress.
Proponents of disqualification are expected to take their legal claim to Cook County Circuit Court. God knows what will happen there, although whatever it is will pale in significance to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The disqualification effort by Democratic groups reveals the extent to which the party is flummoxed by Trump’s political presence.
On one hand, the Democrats are doing everything they can by way of civil lawsuits and criminal charges to ensure GOP voters back Trump for the party’s nomination. Others, apparently fearing a Trump victory in November, have embraced the “insurrection” issue as a means of barring him from running.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to do his best to aggravate the situation with his inflammatory rhetoric. That’s a curious means of trying to build a winning coalition, but it is consistent with his performance art persona.
“The VOTE was 8-0 in favor of keeping your favorite president (ME!) on the ballot. I love Illinois. Make America Great Again,” he stated on a social-media site.
If he’s interpreting the unanimous vote as a display of support, Trump is mistaken. All the board members were clear in stating their legal motivation for their votes while some made clear their disdain for Trump.
So far, only the Colorado courts have banned Trump from the ballot on legal grounds. Maine’s secretary of state unilaterally (and probably illegally) has also barred Trump from that state’s ballot.
Appearances suggest that Trump will win the GOP nomination, although former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley still could make it a race. So it’s not a done deal yet.
That’s why the real issue, of course, is November. By then, if the justices do their job right, they will have disposed of the issue.
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