Until 1870, Cook County had been governed under the "township supervisor" system, under which each Chicago ward elected a supervisor, and each township elected one or more as well depending on population, creating a board of 50 members, less than half from Chicago. In the wake of a scandal involving then board chairman J. J. Kearney (who was eventually unseated and expelled from the board), the new commission was created pursuant to an amendment to the state constitution, initially with ten Chicago commissioners elected from groups of wards within the city, and five members elected from groups of townships outside the city, presided over by a chairman elected by the board from among their own number. The commissioners were elected for three-year terms, on a staggered basis. The first meeting of the new board took place December 4, 1871; they elected businessman and Civil War general Julius White of Evanston as their chairman. [2]
Transition to single-member constituencies
The 1870 version of the Illinois Constitution had established the Board of Commissioners as having fifteen members in total, with ten representing the municipal boundaries of City of Chicago and five from the suburban portions of the county. The separation of the seats into ones elected from the city and ones elected from the suburban county was meant to prevent the city from dominating county board elections, as the suburbs had far less overall population than the city in 1870. In 1870, the city had approximately two-thirds of the county's population, hence why they were given two-thirds of the seats. By the 1970s, the suburban share of the county's population was significantly higher. However, to the 1870 constitution including no clause for county reapportionment, the number of suburban seats had remained stagnant since 1870 causing malapportionment. [3]
In light of the malapportionment concerns, at the 1970 Constitutional Convention (which produced the current constitution of the state, ultimately ratified in December 1970), county board members Carl R. Hansen and Floyd Fulle presented a proposal that the new constitution expand the board initially from fifteen to twenty-one members (13 city seats, 8 suburban seats) with reapportionment of those twenty-one seats after every decennial United States Census. Hansen's rationale for increasing the size of the body was that, he believed, it would create a "more workable legislative body" able to have commissioners carry-out the workload of five or six major committees. [3]
Ultimately, the constitutional convention instead approved a different proposal, which permitted the board to (by passing an ordinance) abolish its two multi-member districts (one city, one suburban), and instead divide itself into single-member districts which could straddle across the city's municipal boundaries (allowing some seats to include both suburban and city constituents). Some suburban Cook County delegates, however, expressed concern that a switch to single-member districts could ultimately weaken Republican representation by allowing the Democratic majority to gerrymander the seats. One Republican suburban Cook County delegate, Joseph Tescon, sought to add language that would only allow a switch to single-member districts to occur if first approved by voters in a countywide referendum, but the convention's delegates voted 54–31 to reject Tescon's clause. [4] A switch to single-member constituencies ultimately did not occur until the 1990s. [5]
