Illinois

Illinois has a plural executive with a distinctive twist on money. Voters elect the Governor, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and, unusually, two separate financial officers: the Comptroller, who approves and writes the state’s payments, and the Treasurer, who holds and invests the state’s funds. Most states combine those roles; Illinois deliberately split them so that the official who authorizes spending is not the same official who controls the cash.

The Governor and Lieutenant Governor run together as a single ticket, so they always share a party. Apart from the separately elected officers, the Governor appoints the heads of the executive agencies and leads a large professional bureaucracy.

The Illinois General Assembly is bicameral: a 59-seat State Senate and a 118-seat House of Representatives. It is a full-time, professional body with a base salary of about $93,712 a year plus a per-diem on session days, and there are no term limits, voters have repeatedly declined to add them.

The Senate has an unusual feature. Instead of fixed four-year terms, senators serve on a staggered "2-4-4" cycle within each decade, two four-year terms and one two-year term, so that every senator faces election at least once after each round of redistricting. The House serves ordinary two-year terms.

A bill is introduced, sent to committee, and, if it advances, voted on the floor of each chamber, with differences reconciled before final passage. What makes Illinois unusual is the breadth of the Governor’s veto power. Beyond signing, a straight veto, or a line-item veto on appropriations, the Governor has a reduction veto (to lower a spending figure) and a rare amendatory veto: the Governor can return a bill with specific recommended changes, and the legislature can accept those changes by a simple majority, override by three-fifths, or let the bill die. Few states give the executive this much ability to rewrite legislation after passage.

A veto override takes three-fifths of each chamber. Illinois has only a very narrow citizen initiative: voters can propose changes solely to the structural and procedural parts of the legislative article of the constitution, not ordinary statutes or broad policy, so direct democracy plays a far smaller role here than in states like California or Ohio.

The Illinois Governor is strong, especially over legislation. The appointment power covers the heads of the non-elected agencies and many boards; the budget, special sessions, emergency powers, and the clemency power round out the office. What sets Illinois apart is the layered veto toolkit, straight, line-item, reduction, and amendatory, which lets the Governor not just block bills but reshape them: the reduction veto trims a spending figure, and the amendatory veto sends a bill back rewritten for the legislature to accept or override.

The main rival power centers inside the executive branch are the independently elected Comptroller, Treasurer, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, and the split between a Comptroller who authorizes payments and a Treasurer who holds the cash is itself a deliberate check on the Governor’s control of state money.

Illinois elects its judges in partisan elections organized by judicial district, then keeps them through nonpartisan retention votes. The Supreme Court of Illinois has seven justices elected from districts and sits at the top, above the Appellate Court and the trial-level Circuit Courts. Mid-term vacancies can be filled by Supreme Court appointment until the next election.