On July 3, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed HB 226. It says that individuals who will be age 18 by November in even-numbered years may register to vote, and to vote, in the March primary that same year. These 17-year-old registered individuals will also be able to sign petitions while they are 17. However, they cannot circulate petitions until they are age 18. UPDATE: see this news story, which shows that the Governor signed the bill while visiting the Stevenson High School in suburban Chicago.
Governor Quinn still hasn’t acted on HB 2418, the omnibus election law bill that doubles the number of signatures needed for candidates for Chicago Alderman.
Maryland has the same law — if you can vote in the general election you can vote in the primary, even if you’re not 18 yet. And because of a strange quirk in the law, that meant that some 16-year-olds could vote in Baltimore in 2003.
Baltimore City holds its local elections the year before the presidential elections (which is the year after the state elections), so that local officials can run for state office and still keep their local office if they lose. But the voter turnout is always dismal, so in 2003 they moved the election to the presidential year. But by an obscure state law that nobody noticed in time, the city could move the general election, but only the state legislature could move the primary. And the state legislators refused to do it, and it was too late for the city to move it back.
So the primary was held in September 2003, and the general election was held in November 2004 — 14 months later. So about one in six 16-year-olds in Baltimore could vote in the local primary in 2003. But very few of them did.
So, needless to say, they moved it back to where it used to be.