| Illinois House of Representatives | |
|---|---|
| Illinois General Assembly | |
| Type | |
| Type | Lower house |
| Term limits | None |
| New session started | January 12, 2011 |
| Leadership | |
| Speaker of the House | Michael Madigan, (D) since January 8, 1997 |
| Majority Leader | Barbara Flynn Currie, (D) since January 8, 1997 |
| Minority Leader | Tom Cross, (R) since January 8, 2002 |
| Structure | |
| Members | 118 |
| Political groups | Democratic Party (64) Republican Party (54) |
| Authority | Article IV, Illinois Constitution |
| Salary | $67,836/year + per diem |
| Elections | |
| Last election | November 2, 2010 (118 seats) |
| Next election | November 6, 2012 (118 seats) |
| Redistricting | Legislative Control |
| Meeting place | |
| House of Representatives Chamber Illinois State Capitol Springfield, Illinois |
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| Website | |
| Illinois House of Representatives | |
The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The state House of Representatives is made of 118 representatives elected from individual legislative districts for a two-year term with no limits. In contrast, the Illinois Senate is made of 59 senators with staggered two- or four-year terms.
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The Illinois House of Representatives meets at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. It is required to convene on the second Wednesday of January each year. Its primary duties are to make laws (including the state budget), act on federal constitutional amendments, and propose constitutional amendments for Illinois. The Illinois House of Representatives also holds the power to impeach executive and judicial officials.
The current Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives is Michael Madigan of Chicago, who represents the 22nd district. The Democratic Party of Illinois currently holds a majority in the House. Under the Illinois Constitution, the office of Minority Leader is recognized for the purpose of making certain appointments. Tom Cross of Plainfield, a Republican representing the 84th district, currently holds the post.
Before the Cutback Amendment to the state constitution in 1980, the state was divided into 59 "legislative districts", each of which elected three representatives, yielding a House of 177 members. This unusual system was even more distinctive in that the election was conducted by a modified form of cumulative voting: each individual voter was given three legislative votes to cast, and could cast either one vote each for three candidates, all three votes for one candidate (known as a "bullet vote"), or 1½ votes each for two candidates. A change adopted in the Illinois Constitution of 1970 formalized the arrangement by which each party would run only two candidates in each district.[1] Thus, in most districts, only four candidates were running for three seats, guaranteeing not only that there would be a single loser, but that each party would have significant representation--a minimum of one-third of the seats--in the House.
The Cutback Amendment was proposed to abolish this system, and since its passage, representatives have been elected from 118 single member constituencies. This was done partly to save money, and partly because the system was so unusual (no other state had anything remotely close to it) that it was seen as an embarrassing oddity.
Since the adoption of the Cutback Amendment, there have been proposals by some major political figures in Illinois to bring back multi-member districts. A task force led by former governor Jim Edgar and former federal judge Abner Mikva issued a report in 2001 calling for the revival of cumulative voting,[2] in part because it appears that such a system increases the representation of racial minorities in elected office.[3] The Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1995 that the multi-member districts elected with cumulative voting produced better legislators.[4] Others have argued that the now-abandoned system provided for greater "stability" in the lower house.[5]
| Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Republican | Vacant | ||
| Seats | 63 | 54 | 118 | 1 |
| % of seats | 53.4% | 45.8% |
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