My perception of Chicago and its surrounding population is a bit different from many others – I didn’t grow up in a single house my entire childhood. I can say that I lived in the city (far south, near north and northwest sides), assorted suburbs and a couple of downstate towns.
If anything, I am a suburban-type person who is a bit more comfortable with the city than many of my neighbors are, and who expects someday to again live in Chicago proper.
SO MY REACTION is to see the humor in a pair of recent incidents where suburban Chicago types are so desperate to maintain their separation from “that urban rathole” that many of them perceive when they think (at all) of the city.
How else to explain the reaction of people from Indiana who on Wednesday learned that some of those “evil Chicagoans” may have tried to cast ballots in their presidential primary on May 6.
Illinoisans (including those who identify primarily with Chicago rather than their home state) had their chance to vote on Feb. 5. Yet elections officials in Lake County, Ind., told local reporters that there were “several” instances of people at polling places in Whiting and East Chicago who asked to cast ballots – and produced Illinois driver’s licenses or other identification indicating they live west of State Line Road.
The Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper reported that none of those people were permitted to vote, and officials are trying to figure out if it was just confusion on the part of people or if there really was some sort of criminal plot to get ballots cast by non-registered voters.
SOME PEOPLE MIGHT think it ridiculously naïve to think that someone would not realize they should not be venturing across the state line in order to try to vote in a presidential campaign. Yet I also have been made aware on many occasions in my life as a reporter-type that not everybody pays strict attention to the specifics of government and electoral politics.
There are many otherwise intelligent people who do not understand the concept of jurisdiction, and can resent it when they are told by a local government official that some facility that sits within a village’s boundaries is actually a Cook County-controlled facility or is a road or other building that falls under state government’s control.
I once had a person (loosely affiliated with the ’92 presidential aspirations of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot) that all government is really the same, and that one of the “reforms” that ought to be imposed is elimination of various levels of government control.
So could there be some people from Chicago who heard all the intense news coverage of the Indiana primary campaign activity and figured it was their civic duty to make a trip to the Land of Hoosiers so as to cast a ballot?
IT’S POSSIBLE, EVEN though a part of me finds it scary to realize that some otherwise hardworking, decent people in our society are clueless enough to not immediately realize the difference between an Illinois primary election and one in Indiana.
Of course, I couldn’t help but notice that the sources of these stories about “Those People” from Illinois coming east to Indiana were members of the Republican Party organization in Lake County.
How weak is the GOP in the northwest part of Indiana? Almost as weak as the GOP in Chicago proper, I would think. At least the Hoosier GOPers in and around Hammond, Ind., know they have the bulk of the rest of their state on their side, whereas the GOP in Illinois has become so weak that it can offer the Chicago Republican Party no moral support whatsoever.
So making scurrilous charges about Chicagoans coming to Indiana to try to stuff ballot boxes with their “outsider” way of thinking is probably the most attention the Lake County Republicans will get in a long time. And there are too many local people who are willing to believe it because they want to think the isolated ways of their town are the ways of the world.
MY POINT IS that while I don’t doubt there are some people clueless enough to try to vote in an Indiana election, I’m not sure the problem is anywhere near as extensive as Indiana Republicans want us to believe it is.
But the notion of wanting to maintain separation between Chicago and its suburbs is not just an issue for the people who live in the part of the metropolitan area that spills over into Indiana. Sadly, even some of those people fortunate enough to live in Cook County, Ill., don’t truly appreciate the benefits their towns derive from being so close to the Second City (it’s really third), which remains the transportation hub of the nation.
Why else would some residents of the northwest suburb of Palatine be seriously looking into the concept of secession?
Some people up there do not like the idea that they are a part of Cook County, which they feel is totally dominated by Chicago. They would rather be able to say they are in a separate county – one of which Palatine would likely become the county seat.
A BILL IS pending in the Illinois General Assembly (sponsored by Palatine’s member of the Illinois House of Representatives) to make it easier for communities to secede from their counties, although it is far from certain that anything will ever happen to advance that bill.
Earlier this week, county board President Todd Stroger held a hearing at Harper College, where he confronted the masses of Palatine (about 200 people, according to the Chicago Tribune) and listened as they blamed his urban ways for causing the problems that confront Cook County government.
“I think Cook County represents the residents of Chicago,” and “I don’t trust you guys,” were among the lines of rhetoric tossed out at Stroger by people who likely wish they lived in some rural burg without any significant city in or near its boundaries.
I only wish these people could take a look at rural life sometime, particularly the sense of isolation that occurs when one’s home is far from anything and when such daily necessities as grocery shopping requires lengthy automobile drives.
THEY’D SEE PLACES like some tiny communities in Southern Illinois and rural Indiana where overall population is on the decline, and where local officials have to seriously address issues related to the drain of young people with talent and skills from their populations.
A place like Palatine can claim some stability in large part because it is so close to a place like Chicago, which serves as a drawing card to the region, and to which some of its working population spills off into the surrounding suburbs.
If the unique set of circumstances required for secession were to ever occur, we would see a place like Palatine engage in celebration for a day at the thought of their independence.
Then, after realizing just what they lost by not being directly tied to the largest county in Illinois (at 5 million people, it is five times the size of the second-largest county – DuPage), we likely would see a mass movement to undo the damage they had just done. It would be interesting to see how quickly they would clamor to come back to Cook.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: And we wonder why some Indiana and Michigan residents make disparaging remarks about (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/06/18/news/top_news/doc08777d7ebc2032a18625746c0000e8c6.txt) “F-I-P’s.”
Palatine wants to think of itself as a world separate from the rest of the Chicago (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-stroger-17-both-jun17,0,1327158.story) metropolitan area.
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