Additional 12 Illinois Counties To Vote On Secession From State, Totalling Nearly Half Of Illinois

It looks like Illinois is about to split in half.

It's been building for years: counties want to leave Illinois. In November 2024, 33 Illinois counties voted to secede from Illinois (most in the southern part of the state) and a bill passed to establish the Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Committee. Even a bill in Iowa earlier this year would absorb seceding Illinois counties.

Basically, we're all willing to help our fellow Midwesterners.

Read More: Is This What The New Illinois/Indiana Border Would Be?

Counties voting this November to explore secession include Henderson, Warren, McDonough, Adams, Piatt, Macoupin, Coles, Monroe, Washington, Hamilton, Saline, and Gallatin.

All 33 of the previous votes have succeeded.

So far, this is how the map is looking going into November.

Illinois has 102 counties. 45 of them have voted/are now voting on secession.

Gov. JB Pritzker hasn't taken this seriously from the beginning, a spokesperson for him calling it a "stunt" and says "it's not going to happen". Illinois legislature would have to sign off on the secession.

Illinois' 'Republic of Forgottonia'

Illinoisans have tried to secede before. A group of 16 counties in west-central Illinois that rallied for secession, an effort that was later abandoned.

This time, the Illinois counties can secede from the state, but it's not without it's hoops. It uses Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states: "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."

Illinois General Assembly has to okay it, then so does the U.S. Congress.