On November 4, 1980, Illinois voters approved the Cutback Amendment, a constitutional amendment which reduced the size of the Illinois House from 177 members to 118 and required House members to run in single-member districts.
It marked the first and only time in state history that Illinois voters had used initiative petition and binding referendum to enact a constitutional amendment or law.
The Cutback Amendment qualified for the statewide referendum ballot after 475,811 Illinois voters signed petitions in an initiative drive spearheaded by the volunteers of the Coalition for Political Honesty.
Illinois voters approved the Cutback Amendment by a 68.7 percent margin (2,112,224 to 962,325) On November 4, 1980.
