Not sure about “want,” so much as “allow,” in this case.
I imagine that there would be some way to geofence access to the voting site, to only allow people currently in Illinois (as indicated by their IP address) to vote – though, that’d exclude people using VPNs, while allowing non-Illinoisians currently in the state to vote.
Short of requiring proof of ID, or something like that, there’s probably no good way to limit voting to residents of the state.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Allowing only those people currently physically present in Illinois, without VPNs, to vote, isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than allowing absolutely anyone at all anywhere in the world.
That also assumes that the Illinois Secretary of State’s website has the ability to geofence to Illinois IPs already implemented. If they don’t, then that’d be something that they’d have to implement (consuming time and budget), simply to run a trivial vote on flag designs, which likely won’t be the primary determining factor on which design is ultimately chosen.
Well, they obviously haven’t geofenced the voting, since I voted and I don’t live anywhere near the state.
I suspect they’ll get a better result without any geofencing, since among those who don’t live in Illinois, only those who are really interested in flags will vote. I’m assuming such people will have an interest in giving the state a good flag.
And those really interested in causing trouble for trouble’s sake. I again refer to the incident of McBoatface, Boaty.
They largely avoided that possibility by restricting the voting to those flags that passed the selection committee plus a couple historic ones and the current flag.
Not a fair comparison at this point. The silly submissions (some of which were shown upthread, IIRC) have already been culled. The voting is only among ten finalists, plus the current flag.
Doesn’t mean the choices are good ones. I think most of these designs are bad.
Courtesy of western WA’s answer to the Onion;
At the very least, I wonder why IL allows multiple votes. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to cap it at one per IP address? Or 1 per valid email address? Or - say - 5 per valid IL mailing address?
Just wondering why whomever thought allowing ballot stuffing a good idea.
Well, it is Illinois. 
Some shit’s just natural.
The upside to “no rules” is you don’t need an enforcement mechanism, and you don’t need to defend your results when the enforcement mechanism(s) prove to be defective or inadequate. Bureaucratically, “no rules” is the optimal decision.
Illinois voters overwhelmingly choose the old design. Current flag gets 165k votes, with 2d place getting 33k. 43% of total vote.
Of course, one could question running the familiar flag against 10 challengers. Might not do as well in a run-off against the top 1-3 vote-getting alternatives.
Yeah. That was in essence a rigged vote.
The same thing is commonly done in totalitarian countries with sham elections. The ruling party runs The Dictator as candidate. And the several bickering minor opposition parties (all at least partly stage-managed by the ruling party) all run some almost no-name candidate against The Dictator.
The opposition is divided, the Dictator gets the votes of whoever likes them (more like whoever benefits from their rule), and the ruler romps to at least an 80% majority victory.
Not shocking in the least. People cling to the familiar. I can’t imagine any design being good enough if presented in a wide enough field that would oust any incumbent flag.
Though, to be honest, that only 43% picked the current flag is somewhat surprising. I expected more there. So a clear majority preferred something other than the original flag. I also have to say, I’m also pleasantly surprised at what was picked as #2. I would’ve been happy with the flag. Maybe tweak the colors, but cool looking flag.
Yeah, but look at #4 - essentially the current flag, plus a coupla limes and minus the state name. Add those together, and support for the incumbent looks even stronger.
It would be interesting to see a run off among the top 5-6 (Looks to be a bit of a drop off between 6 and 7.)
#2 looks too “cartoony” to me. I do not presume it would age well. Does it particularly say"Illinois" to you? Sure, I can imagine the green lines as rows of corn/beans, but the sun and 3 stars? I guess with time it could become as familiar as Texas’ lone star or Colorado’s “C”…
Sure. Even if it was a one-on-one, the old flag would win. Enough of the non-1 and non-2 voters would pick 1 over 2, I would think, to give it a clear edge, even if there wasn’t a similar flag in the running.
So, does that mean we stick with the familiar and liked, or change because - exactly why?
This is the sorta thing where I question my innate fuddy-duddyishness - “If it ain’t broke…”
Matter of taste I suppose. My reason is a simple: I don’t like the current flag. There doesn’t really need to be more to it. Thankfully, I love the Chicago flag, and I think of myself more as a Chicagoan than an Illinoisan, so I’m okay with using that as a vexilllological symbol to cling to.