Editing Menard County, Illinois (section)

==Politics and county government==
Illinois counties have the option of using or rejecting the township form of providing local services.<ref>60 ILCS 1/Art. 5</ref> In Illinois, only 16 of the state's 102 counties have opted out of the township system; Menard County is one of the sixteen.

In the years before [[World War I]], Menard was a German Catholic and thus Democratic county, opposed to the pietism of [[Yankee]] Protestant [[Northern Illinois]].{{citation needed|date=November 2018}} [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in 1904 was the only Republican to carry the county in this time span.

However, resistance against [[Woodrow Wilson]]’s participatory attitude during World War I allowed [[Charles Evans Hughes]] to carry Menard County in 1916 by a mere four votes (Hughes lost the national election). Since then, as German hostility to Wilson hardened, Menard has become a strongly Republican county. The only Democrats who have carried Menard County since 1916 have been [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] in 1932 and 1936, and [[Lyndon Johnson]] in 1964. Apart from these three 400-electoral vote Democratic landslides, [[George H. W. Bush]] in 1992 is the sole Republican candidate since 1920 to fail to win a majority in Menard County. [[Jimmy Carter]] and Illinois-bred Barack Obama are the only Democrats since 1964 to reach forty percent of Menard County’s vote. The last two elections have seen a large swing against the Democrats, common to all of rural downstate Illinois.
{{PresHead|place=Menard County, Illinois|source1=<ref>{{Cite web |last=Leip |first=David |title=Atlas of US Presidential Elections |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS |access-date=April 1, 2018 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>}}
<!-- PresRow should be {{PresRow|Year|Winning party|GOP vote #|Dem vote #|3rd party vote #|State}} -->
{{PresRow|2024|Republican|4,499|1,834|123|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2020|Republican|4,764|2,022|168|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2016|Republican|4,231|1,817|467|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2012|Republican|3,948|2,100|103|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2008|Republican|3,672|2,706|99|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2004|Republican|4,408|2,137|29|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|2000|Republican|3,862|2,164|176|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1996|Republican|3,106|2,204|558|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1992|Republican|2,834|2,264|1,201|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1988|Republican|3,560|2,103|42|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1984|Republican|3,925|1,826|15|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1980|Republican|3,622|1,589|323|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1976|Republican|3,137|2,301|41|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1972|Republican|3,657|1,587|19|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1968|Republican|2,980|1,640|375|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1964|Democratic|2,322|2,491|0|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1960|Republican|3,120|2,068|5|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1956|Republican|3,188|1,833|4|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1952|Republican|3,307|1,946|3|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1948|Republican|2,899|2,043|26|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1944|Republican|3,013|1,888|25|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1940|Republican|3,531|2,894|33|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1936|Democratic|3,067|3,152|58|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1932|Democratic|2,327|3,453|43|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1928|Republican|3,243|1,742|40|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1924|Republican|2,931|1,954|332|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1920|Republican|2,882|1,864|123|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1916|Republican|2,693|2,689|176|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1912|Democratic|620|1,530|1,025|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1908|Democratic|1,600|1,748|164|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1904|Republican|1,705|1,506|236|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1900|Democratic|1,632|2,078|63|Illinois}}
{{PresRow|1896|Democratic|1,642|2,018|48|Illinois}}
{{PresFoot|1892|Democratic|1,278|1,748|248|Illinois}}