•September 14, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

In the wake of the recent embarrassingly political, 4-3 partisan decision by the Illinois Supreme Court Democratic majority to reject a proposed voter initiative to reduce legislative district gerrymandering, savvy political observer Rich Miller has suggested the “nuclear option” of a voter initiative that would simply abolish the Illinois House altogether!

The idea is not so outlandish as one might think at first blush.

First, such a voter initiative would be constitutional, that is, it would meet the state high court’s wrong-headed requirement that initiatives be both “structural and procedural.”

Second, many democratic governments operate quite nicely with unicameral legislative bodies. Readers probably know that Nebraska has a one-house legislature, which they call the senate. [And that state appears to have avoided the dysfunction for which Illinois has become noted.]

Costa Rica is probably the healthiest democratic society in the Americas south of the U.S., other than maybe Uruguay. When I was that sunny clime some years ago, I visited their unicameral “assembly.” And the 30 states of Mexico also operate with unicameral legislatures.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.