The Illinois state flag may be around a lot longer, it turns out.
About 43% of the 385,000 votes in an advisory state flag revision contest decided they’d prefer to resist change and keep the current design.
There were 12 other flag choices. Ten were designed by Illinois residents, students and even the great-grandchildren of Civil War veteran and past Illinois Attorney General James McCartney. The remaining two were designed for past state anniversary celebrations.
A flag design depicting the sun on the horizon, designated “Design #2246,” finished in second place with “Design #3679” finishing in third place. That design depicts Abraham Lincoln’s silhouette and the state of Illinois on a dark blue background.
A flag designed for the state’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1968 finished in last place, with about 5,100 votes.
The vote will be used by the Illinois Flag commission to advise the General Assembly on how they should vote regarding a flag change. So, legislators will have the final say on any future flag changes.
VIEW IN FULL SCREEN MODE | Expand the slideshow to scroll through the gallery to see the designs as well as descriptions about the proposals and their creators. Or, double click/tap the image to see details.
Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, introduced the bill that created the Illinois State Flag Commission, the group that conducted the flag vote. She’s also a member of the commission.
Turner said she doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what’s going to happen.
“I don’t want to talk too much about the results because I think that the commission has to – still has work to do,” Turner said. “And we have to look at, you know, look at those results and do a deep-dive into them and complete our report and submit it to the General Assembly as we said we would do in the legislation.”
The flag commission is expected to issue its report to the legislature later this spring.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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