Mistake by the Lake?

For as long as I've been a politically minded individual, I can remember hearing Republican and Right-leaning individuals in Illinois blame all of Illinois' problems on Chicago...citing Chicago's huge population that heavily leans "Democrat" as the reason that they believe their vote does not count.

Something always struck me as odd about that, it always seemed like a weak minded statement to me...but for a long time, all I had to go on was a hunch.  That all changed this week when I finally decided to put my money where my mouth was and actually go dig through all of those numbers and attempt to put them together to prove my point.

After all of my research, I am more convinced than ever than my hunch is true:  Illinois does not have a Mistake by the Lake of which we can blame all of our bad results.  The only mistake in Illinois is we have become lethargic and chose to turn Chicago into the scapegoat we needed to justify inaction.

The essence of our country is that "Majority Wins"  ... so if 51% of the population THINKS one way, then they should win?  Right?  But what if only 10% of that majority bother to show up to vote?  Voting is where it counts, and "We the people" in Illinois have chosen, for far too long, to opt out of that one chance we have, every few years, to make a change. 

And when I say "We the people" I am referring to anyone who disagrees with the current political establishment in Illinois.  Whether you consider yourself Democrat or Republican, or, like me, neither, I am talking about all of us fed up with record Debt, no Concealed Carry, no Class III, no Gambling, oppressive Government oversight restricting our teachers and putting our officers of the law in harms way...many of us believed Bill Brady embodied most, if not all, of those ideals, but regardless if you agree with that statement, if you are "We the people" it seems to go without saying that Brady was a much better option than Quinn where individual freedoms were concerned (Especially for 2nd Amendment Rights!!!!)...I could go on all day, but to put it simply:  "We The People" are the problem:  Not Chicago.  And I'm going to prove it to you.

In the 2010 Election, there were two "Primary" candidates (I love 3rd Party Options, but for the sake of argument, and since their numbers were disappointingly low, we are going to concentrate on the top two)  Patt Quinn v.s. Bill Brady.

In 2010, The State of Illinois had a population of 12,830,632 (According to the U.S. Census in the same year)

Of the 12.8 million, there are 8.7 million people who are old enough (and eligible) to vote.

Of the 8.7 million people able to vote in the State of Illinois in 2010, only 3.7 million bothered to show up in 2010 and actually cast a vote for one candidate or another.  That's less than half voter turn out (42.5%)

As far as the Governor goes, Quinn won by a very narrow margin (these numbers according to the New York Times)

Pat Quinn: 1,745,219 (46.8%)

Bill Brady: 1,713,385 (45.9%)

That's 31,835 votes shy of Bill Brady becoming our next Governor in Illinois.  Not many elections are that close at all, and to some, it might suggest that "We the people" are waking up...but to me, it suggests that "They" are becoming complacent...in other words, they're not showing up to vote.  Our time is now!

So, that's all of the basic info...but so far I haven't proven my theory...I'm getting there, I promise.

In order to see the tree through the forest, we have to do some BIG TIME data digging, number crunching, and investigating...and here is the fruit of that labor...election results, by County, in Illinois, in 2010.

You can click here to view a chart of all the raw data in one image

If you look at the election results on a red/blue map of Illinois, it looks to paint a big picture

 Red = Brady

Blue = Quinn

So it's easy to see, looking at this map, how one might draw the conclusion that "Chicago decides our elections" because all but 3 County's voted for Brady, but Quinn still won.  But it requires a little more discipline to look past it and see that it is, indeed, our fault.

In Illinois, we don't use the Electoral College...instead Governors are elected by popular vote...not how many red states or blue states, and the color of the state is not entirely representative of the voter turn out (In other words, if you have 500 people in a county, 20 show up, 15 being republican, then the county is red, but only 15 votes went the republican candidate...why didn't the other 480 people show up?  And how many of those 480 would have voted Republican?)

Well, obviously there's no way to know "How many would vote Republican" we can only draw on theories, and my theory is that too many republicans are refusing to show up, choosing instead to blame their problems on Chicago.

If we remove Chicago (more pointedly, Cook County) from the picture, we're left with these results, in theory

Quinn	844,381
Brady	1,313,100

And here we can see why it's easy to say "Just get rid of Chicago" because without Chicago, "We Win" ... but are we pulling a Bill Buckner here?  

Are we blaming the outcome of the game on one single mistake made before the game was even over?  Before the series was ever even concluded?  Are we forgetting about the terrible pitching from a tired, scared pitcher, that led to 3 straight singles?  Or the pitching change to bring in a cold arm that gives up the tying run on the first pitch?  Why does Buckner get all of the blame?  He could have stopped the ball, but the pitcher could have thrown a better pitch, or the catcher could have caught the ball...yet people chose to single out Buckner because he was the best example, and the easiest scapegoat for the moment.

This is no different.  *IF* We get rid of Chicago, then the rest of us can have our way without having to change anything.  Those who set on their asses on election day, don't have to leave.  Those who voted, but didn't vote for a Governor, have to change nothing.  People don't have to talk and debate, we just remove Chicago and holy shit planet Earth spins around the Sun once again.

But that isn't plausible.  Chicago is not going any where.  There is no 51st State, no chance of it ever happening (after all...where does that 51st star go?  Certainly it'd be a boost for the flag Industry...most of which Made in China...)

No.  Chicago is not the problem.  Looking at the chart above will reveal why

Will County has a population of 677,560 people.  Of those, only 177,617 people voted.  

79,786 for Quinn

97, 831 for Brady

Where were the other 499,943 people?  How would they have voted?  We can only speculate, for sure, but we can draw some pretty broad conclusions to paint a point...remember how we discussed earlier than Quinn only won by >32,000 votes?  If only 10% of the remaining 500,000 people in Will County had showed up to vote and happened to be Republican, Brady would have won.

Kane County has a population of 515,269 people.  Of those, only 117,005 people voted.

48579 for Quinn

68426 for Brady

Where were the 398,264 other people?  How would they have voted?  We can only speculate, for sure, but we can draw some pretty broad conclusions to paint a point...remember how we discussed earlier than Quinn only won by >32,000 votes?  If only 10% of the remaining 400,000 people in Kane County had showed up to vote and happened to be Republican, Brady would have won.

Now, I can literally do this all night long to paint the narrative, and there are only 3 county's that this doesn't apply to, so you can take my word for it, or you can figure it out for yourselves. 

At this point, I know the skeptics might be thinking "But the remaining population doesn't break down the number of people eligible to vote, it's too broad of a number" and to a degree, I would agree.  So lets look at a number that is not generic and broad.

Of the 12.8 million people in the State of Illinois, 8,780,681 are eligible to vote (of voting age, not a felon, not incarcerated, etc)  Of the 8,780,681 people that CAN vote, only 3,792,770 bothered to show up at all...that leaves a balance of 4,987,911 people remaining that CAN vote but CHOSE NOT TO.

Are you starting to get the picture?  Well, if not, don't worry, there's a lot more to go...  So there are 4.987 million people in Illinois that CAN VOTE but choose not to.  Now, of those people, there is no doubt some are Democrat, some are Republican, some are "Other".

Lets go back to Cook County for a second...Cook County has 5.194 million people, and 1,301,123 chose to vote, leaving 3.893 million people who CAN VOTE but chose NOT TO.  Of the people remaining, SOME are Democrat, SOME are Republican, and SOME are "other".

So even if we assume that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the people in Cook County who CAN vote but chose NOT TO would have voted for Quinn, but chose not to, and we subtract THAT number from the over all people in the entire State that chose not to vote, we still end up with 1.094 million people in the State of Illinois to choose from that have a greater chance than not to vote republican.  And even if we only reached out to 10% of those 1.094 million people, we would have had 300% more votes than needed to win the election.

This is worst case scenario type of stuff we're talking about here...and even when choosing bottom of the barrel scenarios here, it's still very easy to win if we can only convince a small number of people who say "My vote doesn't count, Chicago decides Illinois politics" that they're doing nothing but creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and making the problem MUCH worse.

Now, of course, if you don't like Brady OR Quinn, then your argument of "My vote doesn't count" might actually hold some water, but from my experiences, that's never the case.  From my personal life experiences, the issues we look for in a Governor of Illinois center around Business, Taxes, and the 2nd Amendment.

Illinois is the only State in the Union to not allow some sort of Concealed Carry.  The only one.  Concealed Carry is such a passionate and deep seated debate in this State that we even have Democrats in the House & Senate that are writing legislation, teaming up with republicans, and trying to pressure Quinn into signing the bill.

But time after time, Quinn, and those like him, continue to turn it down.  Brady promised to change that, among many other things.  Was he lying?  Maybe.  But we know for sure Quinn won't support it, so isn't it better, if Concealed Carry is an important issue to you, to vote for an unknown, than not vote and allow in certain doom?

In fact, many opinions on this race were that Quinn and Brady were exact opposites of each other (A good article written here)

So if "We the People" wanted Concealed Carry in Illinois, all we had to do was convince 10% of the 20% of remaining voters in the state to vote for Brady.  That's it.  Of the 1.094 million people to choose from, all we have to do is convince 32,000 to vote for Brady.  Just convince them to show up and vote.  Nothing more.  If everyone reading this convinced 1 person, and that person convinced at least 1 other person, it would not take long at all to get the slim numbers we needed to put Brady in office and firearms in our holsters.

Now, the Skeptics are no doubt going to bring up that a Governor does not have the authority, alone, to pass Concealed Carry, which is true, but remember, we've already talked about all of the Democrats who support Concealed Carry, and when added to all of the Republicans in the House and Senate, we have a very healthy team assembled for pro-concealed-carry rights, all that is missing is a competent and law abiding Governor.

In the end, the absolute worst case scenario is that every last citizen that is ELIGIBLE to vote shows up to vote, but someone like Quinn still makes it into the election because 50.001% of voters voted Democrat.  But that's how a democracy works.  Chicago doesn't have the numbers to decide.  

Cook County have a lot of numbers, sure, but their ideals are almost entirely exclusive to Cook County...the rest of the state never follows suit..."We the people" just never show up to vote.  Remember, just because a county is red doesn't mean more than a handful of voters chose to show up.

Majority wins.  We are the majority, we can prove it to ourselves, we just have to show up.

Think of all of your personal friends and gun enthusiasts.  Now think of at least one of them who refuses to vote because they believe Chicago decides the elections.

Now go convince that person to vote.

If we can all do that, we *WILL* win.  The numbers prove it.  We have to stop blaming Bill Buckner and realize that the only people to blame is ourselves.  Chicago does not decide anything that "We the People" don't want them to.  Get vocal.  Be active.  Educate and assimilate.

We ARE the majority.  It's time we started acting like it.