A stealth referendum question about vouchers may be on your ballot on March 17th! Here's what to know:

Illinois law enables voters or lawmakers to add up to three non-binding questions (per political subdivision, e.g. county) on election ballots to be voted for or against. These are also known as advisory referenda or ballot measures. 

On March 17th, about 10% of Illinois voters will have a non-binding question on their primary ballot about whether Illinois should opt into the federal voucher program. You can check on this list to see if your county (or, in a few cases, your township) will have the ballot question.

Concerningly, the question is misleadingly worded (see details below). It implies that the program will not redirect public dollars to fund private schools and does not include the word voucher.

We urge all voters to vote NO on the question about the federal voucher program.

Share this fact sheet on the referenda.

Based on this news story, it looks like these stealth voucher ballot questions were coordinated by the Illinois Policy Institute, an ultra-conservative, anti-public school think tank funded by rightwing billionaires, including Charles Koch and Dick Uihlein. You can read more about IPI here.

The results of these ballot questions have no legal impact; the decision about whether Illinois joins the federal voucher program is up to Governor Pritzker and the General Assembly.

However, IPI and other voucher supporters are likely to use any favorable results as an indicator of public support for vouchers. 

Historically, vouchers have lost on the ballot every time voters have been asked to weigh in since 1970, including the 2024 general election, where voters in Kentucky and Nebraska soundly rejected them by about 2:1. Voucher proponents know that vouchers aren’t popular with voters, which explains the deceptive wording on this latest question, describing the program as a federal program that distributes private dollars:

Voters reading their ballot carefully may ask: why would you need a federal program to distribute private money? The answer is that the federal voucher program spends public dollars. It will divert billions of tax dollars from the US Treasury to fund mostly private education around the country. There is no limit on the size of the program in the statute, but estimates are upwards of $25 billion a year.

Because each of these advisory questions were approved by different jurisdictions, the wording may vary! Here's the wording on the Grundy County ballot for example:

More about the federal voucher program

The federal voucher program, set to begin in January 2027, is structured as a tax credit scholarship program, like Illinois’ now-defunct voucher program, known as “Invest in Kids.” Tax credit scholarship vouchers let taxpayers divert some portion of the taxes they owe to third-party “scholarship granting organizations” (SGOs). 

These SGOs then distribute the money as vouchers to pay for private school tuition and fees, mostly at religious schools. 

Regulations to implement the program are not yet finalized, but all indications thus far are that the SGO industry will be dominated by large multi-state organizations (e.g. a Florida SGO with ~$1B in revenue last year), with assistance from Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, which has already seeded a $10 million fund for AFC to promote SGOs that align with it, in addition to creating its own SGO. 

The money given to SGOs would otherwise be collected as tax payments, and courts have ruled that legally these are public funds.

Voucher programs were created to fund private schools with tax dollars , and the federal one is likely to be no different—despite the fact that in theory some dollars could go to SGOs that distribute money for individual public school families’ expenses. The overall drain on public school budgets if even a small percentage of students leave for private schools will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, far outweighing any revenue from SGOs to public school students.

Opting into the federal voucher program will undoubtedly and irreversibly erode Illinois' public school funding—which is why we urge all voters to vote NO on this ballot question to send a clear message: Illinois says NO to vouchers.

More resources

• “What to know about the new federal school voucher program” - IL-FPS's FAQ
• "The Federal Tax Credit Voucher Program: A Landscape of Risks for Public Schools and Students" - National Coalition for Public Education
• "The Federal Tax Credit Program is Not Offering Free Money for States" - National Coalition for Public Education
• "Vouchers hurt equity": Illinois had a voucher program in the form of a tax credit scholarship from 2018-2024. This 1-pager summarizes IL-FPS' research on how the program funded discrimination, not equity. More background on Illinois' voucher program here.

On Wednesday night, IL-FPS broke the news that Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under former (and now indicted) President Trump, was spending thousands in the mayoral race in support of Paul Vallas. 

School board races are being flooded with dark money

Tuesday April 4th is voting day for local elections—including school boards—throughout Illinois. That’s when Chicago holds its municipal run-offs for mayor and many city council seats. And, outside of Chicago, in addition to school boards, library boards and village boards (or city council) elections take place on April 4th as well.