If many Illinois politicians had their way, no pesky voters — not a one — would clutter their path to power. Witness the cheesy resign-and-donate gimmick in which officeholders abruptly decide to “spend more time with my family” and bequeath the remainder of their terms to their children or cronies. Witness the drawing of district lines so elections are all but determined long before — sometimes years before — the polls open. But in the pantheon of tricks to keep voters from choosing their public officials, the scheme by which Democrats joined in a plot to disenfranchise 54,000 of their fellow Democrats was remarkable.