Since 2020, 33 Illinois counties have voted to explore seceding from Cook County and the state of Illinois. That's nearly a third of the 102 counties in the state. All of those counties approved the referendum by a landslide.
For the upcoming November election, the referendum will be on the ballot in seven more counties, according to New Illinois, one of the major groups pushing for creating a new state. The county boards of Coles, Gallatin, Hamilton, Henderson, Macoupin, Monroe, and Saline recently voted to include a resolution on the November ballot that reads: “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.”
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.
While most of the counties are downstate, the idea of forming a state from counties scattered across Illinois is problematic, to say the least. The other major hurdles are securing approval from both Houses of the Democratic Illinois legislature and both Houses of Congress for the new state.
It's a long shot, to be sure.
“It’s difficult because you have to get a lot of different parties to agree,” University of Illinois Springfield professor Kenneth Owen said. “You have to get the home state to agree. You have to get the federal government to agree, and it sits very unevenly with a series of other legal rulings.”
Republican Rep. Brad Halbrook has been one of the leaders in the separation movement since 2019, when he filed a resolution to ask Congress to separate portions of Illinois and create a new state. At the time, he argued that Chicagoans 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.
The biggest stumbling block is that there would be no clear-cut boundaries for the new state. Some of the seceding counties are in the western part of the state, and some are in the northern part as well. There isn't a workable solution to this problem unless half the state (or more) would vote to join the secessionists.
I live in Illinois and would love to be unencumbered by the radicals in Chicago. But there's no realistic way forward. It will be seen as a historical curiosity, nothing more.
