BOOK REVIEW By BILL DAY

How the state's Constitution was approved — and other lessons

JoAnna M. Watson, Electing a Constitution: The Illinois Citizen and the 1970 Constitution. University of Illinois Press for Institute of Government and Public Affairs, Urbana: 1980. xii + 138 pp. Tables, maps, appendixes and index. Paper, $5.95.

FOUR ELECTIONS are put under the microscope in this monograph: the 1968 vote in the general election on calling a constitutional convention, the nonpartisan primary and general elections of delegates in 1969, and the special election of December 15, 1970, on ratification of the new constitution and on four separate propositions. Why examine in detail these plebiscites of a decade ago? Is this a book only for the political scientist or historian?

Not at all. The book could shed light on the outcome of the current campaign to reduce the size of the Illinois House. Its description of the nonpartisan selection of Con Con delegates now seems to have foreshadowed growing dissatisfaction with party systems in this country. Finally, the book's examination of the very low turnout in the final referendum suggests alienation between constitution makers in Illinois and the people.

One of the four separate questions on the constitution ballot was whether to retain three-member representative districts with cumulative voting. The alternative choice on the ballot was single-member districts. (The other separate propositions were judicial selection, death penalty and voting age). The reformers who supported single-member districts were able to raise a budget of only $9,200, yet they carried 76 counties. But strong support in Cook County to keep multi-member districts overcame this lead. Those who today want to stop Patrick Quinn's drive to establish single-member districts, eliminate cumulative voting and reduce the membership of the House from 177 to 118 would do well to counter his campaign early on.

The chapter on delegate selection describes the only experience we have had in Illinois at the statewide level with a nonpartisan primary and election. The point was to protect the emerging constitution from being seen as a "political" creation, using the word political in a derogatory sense. Although this strategy by no means excluded party maneuvering in the convention, especially on the part of the Chicago delegation, Watson believes, "Many delegates felt a sense of political independence which does not exist to any degree among party professionals."

Yet it was a political party and its boss, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, whose support of the constitution in the closing weeks of the ratification campaign provided the votes needed for adoption. What about the mass of people? Sixty-two percent of those eligible to vote in the referendum did not do so, although post-election surveys revealed that 76 percent of the nonvoters thought the new constitution was a good thing.

This underscores the overall impression Watson leaves: that those who sought a new constitution for Illinois consistently felt it necessary to downplay substantive issues and avoid electoral tactics that would rouse the enemies of constitutional change and perhaps attract a big turnout that might cast negative votes. In other words, they did not trust the people or at least they distrusted their own ability to convince the people that the new constitution was a good thing. Watson has assembled a mass of information — including opinion polls — taken during the period that helps illuminate these issues.

Social science teachers will find the book an excellent source for presenting problems to their students. The law requires study of the state constitution in the schools; here is a way to make it come alive, especially the chapter on the voting age.

Watson's book is the ninth in a series, "Studies in Illinois Constitution Making," edited by Joseph P. Pisciotte. Like Pisciotte and the authors of most of the other books in the series, Watson was an "insider" at the convention and during the ratification campaign. She now is director of summer school and community education at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

Editor emeritus Bill Day has been a student of the Illinois Constitution since 1934 when he wrote a series of newspaper articles in advance of the ill-fated referendum that November on calling a constitutional convention.

22/July 1980/Illinois Issues