Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy speaks at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair last August. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

Early voting and mail-in voting is OK and might even help Republicans win elections, the leader of the Republican Party told a large gathering of Illinois Republicans on Friday night as part of the party’s new embrace of practices to make voting more accessible.

The Illinois Capitol 

A new state task force is beginning to meet to discuss the possibility of implementing ranked choice voting for the 2028 presidential primary election.  

Sen. Doris Turner (D-Springfield) speaks at a news conference on Thursday. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

It’s been nearly a year since the Morgan County coroner discovered major issues with misidentified and mishandled human remains at a Carlinville funeral home, which quickly led to dozens of families around the country learning the cremated remains they received from Heinz Funeral Home weren’t actually the remains of their loved ones.  

Investigations into what happened at the funeral home and identifying the correct remains for about 80 families around the country continues, especially for Sangamon Coroner Jim Allmon who had to exhume a fifth set of misidentified remains from Camp Butler Cemetery in Springfield on Thursday before he attended a news conference at the State Capitol.

Sen. Omar Aquino (D-Chicago) leads a news conference in Springfield on Wednesday. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

Lawmakers and advocates are continuing to push for Illinois to enact a child tax credit as a critical anti-poverty measure. But in a year with new budget pressures and many requests for tax credits, the lawmakers and advocates behind the proposal faced questions about whether the state can afford it.  

Illinois Manufacturers’ Association CEO Mark Denzler speaks at a news conference in Springfield on Wednesday. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

Illinois lawmakers need to do more to position the state as a leader in research and development and new carbon capture and sequestration technologies, according to the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association.  

Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) holds a news conference in Springfield on Wednesday. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) has had enough of hearing horror stories from parents about the effects of social media on their children. She’s pushing legislation she believes needs to be passed at the state level to rein in how social media companies target children through advertising and algorithms. 

Lawmakers and advocates call for eliminating the tipped minimum wage at a rally outside the Illinois Capitol on Tuesday. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line] 

Advocates want to extend a new Chicago ordinance eliminating the tipped minimum wage to the rest of the state to boost wages for employees who receive tips as part of their income.  

Gov. JB Pritzker delivers the 2023 state of the state and budget address last February. [Blue Room Stream] 

State revenue remains around the same level as this time last year, according to the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability’s (CGFA) January report — the last before Gov. JB Pritzker presents his Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal on Feb. 21.

Members of various Illinois business associations speak at a news conference in Springfield on May 19, 2023. [Ben Szalinski/The Daily Line]  

After hitting a wall at the end of the 2023 spring session, Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) is making a new proposal to reform the state’s biometric privacy laws that he hopes businesses will be on board with.  

Illinois Farm Bureau President Brian Duncan and a group of state lawmakers present an estate tax reform plan at the Illinois Farm Bureau in Bloomington last week. [Blue Room Stream]   

A bipartisan group of lawmakers representing rural communities is hoping to move forward a plan this week that raises the trigger level for the estate tax for farms to provide Illinois farming families more certainty about the future of their business.