Guide 10

Illinois Ballot Questions: Referendums, Petitions and Recall

A local ballot question in Illinois (the law calls it a "public question") gets on the ballot in one of two ways: the governing body puts it there by resolution or ordinance, or voters put it there by petition. What the question can do depends on how it got there. A question that voters start on their own under the general petition rule is advisory only. It measures opinion and has no legal effect. A binding question, one that actually changes a tax, a boundary or a form of government, can go to referendum only when a statute or the Illinois Constitution authorizes it, and that statute sets its own rules.

For the April 6, 2027 consolidated election, the key dates are close together: citizen petitions for public questions are due January 4, 2027, objections are due January 11, governing bodies must adopt their resolutions by January 19, and questions are certified to the election authority by January 28. A citizen advisory petition needs signatures equal to at least 8% of the votes cast for Governor in the district at the preceding gubernatorial election, and no more than three public questions can usually go on the ballot for one political subdivision at the same election.

This guide walks through each piece: the two kinds of questions, how to start one, the petition rules, the calendar, back-door referendums, the three-question limit, running the campaign once a question is certified, and what Illinois law says about recall. Each section links to a deeper post. Nothing here is legal advice; the Illinois State Board of Elections says the same about its own guides, so confirm every number and date with your election authority, and talk to an election attorney before you file anything.

Advisory and binding questions: the first thing to know

Illinois law draws a sharp line between questions that do something and questions that only ask.

Binding questions. "Questions which have any legal effect shall be submitted to referendum only as authorized by a statute which so provides or by the Constitution" (10 ILCS 5/28-1). If you want voters to approve a tax rate increase, a bond issue, a change in the form of government or a new district, the authority has to come from a specific statute. That statute decides who can start the question, how many signatures are needed (if a petition is allowed at all), who may sign, what the petition says, where it is filed and how the question is worded. Where the statute is silent, the general rules in Article 28 of the Election Code fill the gaps.

Advisory questions. Under 10 ILCS 5/28-6, registered voters can petition to put a question on the ballot in their municipality, township, county or school district. Those questions "shall be advisory public questions, and no legal effects shall result" (10 ILCS 5/28-6(c)). A strong yes vote can carry real political weight with a board, but it does not change the law by itself.

That distinction shapes everything else. Before you print a petition or plan a campaign, find out which kind of question you are dealing with and, for a binding one, which statute authorizes it. Our explainer on advisory vs binding referendums in Illinois goes through the difference in detail, including the home rule questions covered by Article VII of the Constitution.

How a question gets on the ballot

There are three common paths.

1. The governing body places it. A village board, school board, park board or county board adopts a resolution or ordinance putting a question on the ballot. For April 6, 2027, those resolutions are due January 19, 2027 (Calendar; 10 ILCS 5/28-2). Many school and park funding referendums start this way.
2. Voters petition for an advisory question. Registered voters of the unit file a petition under 28-6 with the local election official or election authority, signed by at least 8% of the votes cast for Governor in the unit at the preceding gubernatorial election.
3. Voters petition under a specific statute. Some binding questions, including Article VII home rule questions and back-door referendums, can be started by voter petition. The signature count and rules come from the authorizing statute.

For Article VII questions (home rule and other constitutional local-government actions), the referendum can be started either by the governing body's resolution or by a petition filed with the unit's clerk or secretary, signed by at least 8% of the total votes cast for Governor in the preceding gubernatorial election. The same proposition cannot go to referendum more than once in 23 months, or 47 months for a question about opting out of home rule (10 ILCS 5/28-7).

One more rule matters for timing: a public question can only appear on a ballot where those same voters are also voting on candidates (10 ILCS 5/28-1). You cannot call a stand-alone special election for a local question; you aim for a regular election, and in 2027 that means February 23 or April 6.

The step-by-step version, from choosing your question to filing, is in how to get a question on the local ballot in Illinois.

The petition: format, signers and circulators

A public question petition follows rules that will feel familiar to anyone who has carried a candidate petition. Under 10 ILCS 5/28-3:

• Sheets are uniform in size, and every sheet carries the same heading stating the question and the territory.
• Signers are registered voters who sign "in their own proper persons only," with their addresses.
• The circulator is at least 18 and a U.S. citizen, and signs a circulator statement at the bottom of each sheet that is "sworn to before some officer authorized to administer oaths," which in practice means a notary.
• Sheets are bound and numbered, and only originals are filed.

Petitions are signed in ink on paper. There is no electronic signature option for an Illinois public question petition, and a signature collected any other way will not count.

How many signatures? For a citizen advisory question under 28-6, at least 8% of the total votes cast for candidates for Governor in the preceding gubernatorial election by the registered voters of the municipality, township, county or school district. For a binding question, the authorizing statute sets the number; there is no single statewide figure. In both cases, ask your local election official or election authority for the base number and the minimum, and then collect well above it, because objections strike signatures.

Our how-to on collecting signatures for a local public question covers the door-to-door side: setting a goal with margin, recruiting circulators, routing streets and checking sheets before you file.

Objections

Public question petitions can be challenged the same way candidate petitions can. Any legal voter of the political subdivision where the question would be voted on may file an objection, with the same office where the petition was filed, and it is heard by an electoral board under 10 ILCS 5/10-9 and 10-10 (10 ILCS 5/10-8). For the April 6, 2027 election, objections to public question petitions are due January 11, 2027. If you have been through a candidate objection, the process will look familiar; our post on petition objections in Illinois explains how the hearings work.

The 2027 calendar for public questions

Article 28 sets the general deadlines: citizen petitions must be filed at least 92 days before the election, petitions to create a new unit of government at least 122 days before, and governing body resolutions or ordinances at least 79 days before (10 ILCS 5/28-2). A petition also cannot name an election more than one year out, or 15 months for back-door referendums (28-2(d)).

Applied to the 2027 elections, from the State Board of Elections 2027 calendar:

Certification is done by the local election official and the clerk of the circuit court, who certify questions to the election authority; the election authority then publishes notice (10 ILCS 5/28-5). For most local referendums this cycle, April 6 is the election that matters, and January is the month when the ballot is set.

Back-door referendums

A back-door referendum runs the other direction from a normal question. The governing body acts first, and voters can petition to force that action onto the ballot. The Election Code defines it as "the submission of a public question to the voters of a political subdivision, initiated by a petition of voters or residents of such political subdivision, to determine whether an action by the governing body of such subdivision shall be adopted or rejected" (10 ILCS 5/28-2(f)).

Three details matter if you are on either side of one:

• The published ordinance or resolution must state how many signatures are needed, the deadline to file, and the date of the referendum.
• The clerk must provide a petition form on request.
• The filing deadline is whatever the authorizing statute says, "but in no case later than 92 days prior to the ensuing election."

Back-door referendums are also one of the exceptions to the three-question limit. Our explainer on back-door referendums in Illinois walks through how to read the notice and what the timeline looks like.

The three-question limit

Illinois caps how many public questions can appear for one political subdivision at one election. Under 10 ILCS 5/28-1, "not more than 3 public questions" may be submitted to referendum with respect to a political subdivision at the same election. If more than three are started, "the first 3 validly initiated" go on the ballot.

There are exceptions, including back-door referendums, Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (tax cap) referendums, and certain township and county questions. Separately, only one question about changing a municipality's form of government can be on the ballot per municipality per election.

The practical lesson for citizen groups: if your village board or school board is also planning questions for the same election, the order in which questions are validly initiated can decide whether yours appears. File early in the window, file a clean petition, and ask the local election official how many questions are already pending for your unit.

Running a referendum campaign

Once a question is certified, it becomes a campaign. The work looks a lot like a candidate race, with a few differences.

Who runs it. When a school or park board places a funding question on the ballot, the board itself cannot campaign for it with public money. Public funds may not be used to urge a vote for or against a question, though the public body can share factual information. The rules for what a public body, its staff and its resources can and cannot do are specific, so ask your attorney about the rules for public bodies before anyone on the district side helps. The advocacy usually comes from a separate citizen committee that raises its own money and recruits its own volunteers.

Campaign finance. Illinois law treats spending on a public question the same way it treats spending on a candidate. Groups or individuals who raise or spend more than $5,000 in any 12-month period in support of or in opposition to a public question generally must file a Statement of Organization (Form D-1) with the State Board of Elections and become a political committee (10 ILCS 5/9-3). The D-1 is due within 10 business days of crossing $5,000, or within 2 business days if that happens in the 30 days before an election. Once a committee registers, it files every required report until it files a final report.

Persuasion and turnout. A referendum has no candidate to introduce, so the message is the question itself: what it does, what it costs, and what happens if it fails. The field plan has two jobs, persuading undecided voters and turning out the voters who already agree. Those jobs use different lists and different scripts.

Three posts cover this ground in depth:

• Running a referendum campaign: a plan for school or park funding, a week-by-week plan from now to April 6, 2027.
• Canvassing for a referendum: persuasion vs turnout, which covers which doors to knock, when, and what to record.
• Texting for a referendum committee, on consent, registration and the messages that matter in the last weeks.

For how a canvassing app fits this work, see Beacon for referendum campaigns.

Recall in Illinois

People often come to ballot questions because they want an official out of office. Here is what the state's own election guidance covers, and what it does not.

The Governor. The Illinois Constitution provides a recall process for the Governor (Ill. Const. Art. III, Sec. 7), added by an amendment adopted November 2, 2010. It starts with an affidavit of intent filed with the State Board of Elections no sooner than six months after the start of the Governor's term, signed by the proponent, at least 20 members of the House and at least 10 members of the Senate, with no more than half of each group from the same established party. The petition then needs signatures equal to at least 15% of the total votes cast for Governor at the preceding gubernatorial election, with at least 100 signatures from each of at least 25 counties, gathered within 150 days. If certified, a special election asks, "Shall (name) be recalled from the office of Governor?" A majority yes removes the Governor, and a successor is chosen at a special election.

Local officials. None of the sources we rely on, including the State Board of Elections 2027 Candidate's Guide, its 2027 election calendar, Article 28 of the Election Code and Article III of the Constitution, address recall of mayors, village trustees, aldermen, school board members or other local officials. We are not going to tell you that local recall exists or that it does not. If you are considering it, read your municipality's code and talk with an election attorney before you spend any time on a petition.

Recall in Illinois: what the law provides covers the Governor's process step by step. If recall is not an option where you live, organizing around an official you want out lays out the paths that clearly exist: running or recruiting a candidate, using ballot questions, and building an organization that lasts past one election.

Where Beacon fits

Most of the work in a ballot question campaign happens at the door: collecting petition signatures in December, persuading undecided voters in February, and reminding supporters to vote in March and April. That is the work Beacon is built for. You put your district's voters on a map as walk lists, route each volunteer through their streets, and record what happened at every door: contacted, not home, refused, moved, come back later, left literature, plus a 1 to 5 rating, notes and survey answers. A survey question can capture "signed petition: yes / no" during petition season and "supports the question: yes / no / undecided" during the campaign. The app works offline and syncs when the phone has signal again, territory management keeps volunteers from walking the same streets, and every plan includes unlimited canvassers.

When it is time to text the supporters who opted in, CampaignCNX+ handles the messaging, and CoreCNX keeps one record for each person across doors and texts. See how Beacon works for local campaigns.

Every post in this guide

• How to get a question on the local ballot in Illinois
• Advisory vs binding referendums in Illinois
• Collecting signatures for a local public question
• Back-door referendums in Illinois: how they work
• Running a referendum campaign: a plan for school or park funding
• Canvassing for a referendum: persuasion vs turnout
• Texting for a referendum committee
• Recall in Illinois: what the law provides
• Organizing around an official you want out

If your question also involves candidates, the Illinois nominating petitions guide covers candidate petitions for the same 2027 elections.

Frequently asked questions

Can citizens put a binding question on the ballot in Illinois?

Only where a statute or the Constitution allows it. Article VII questions such as home rule can be started by voter petition, and some statutes allow back-door referendums. A question started under the general citizen petition rule (10 ILCS 5/28-6) is advisory and has no legal effect.

How many signatures does a local advisory referendum need?

At least 8% of the total votes cast for candidates for Governor at the preceding gubernatorial election by the registered voters of the municipality, township, county or school district. Your local election official or election authority can tell you the exact number. Collect a margin above it.

When is the deadline for an April 6, 2027 public question?

Citizen petitions are due January 4, 2027. Governing body resolutions are due January 19, 2027. Objections to petitions are due January 11, and questions are certified by January 28.

Can a school district campaign for its own referendum?

Public funds may not be used to urge a vote for or against a question, though factual information is allowed. Advocacy usually comes from a separate citizen committee. Ask your attorney about the rules for public bodies before district staff or resources are involved.

Can I recall my mayor or school board member in Illinois?

The state's candidate guide and election calendar do not cover recall of local officials, so this guide does not say either way. Check your municipality's code and consult an election attorney. The Illinois Constitution provides a recall process for the Governor.

Start with the doors

Whether you are collecting signatures this winter or knocking doors before April 6, the campaign is won one street at a time. Start a 14-day Beacon trial, put your district on the map, and give every volunteer a routed list.