In the Illinois State Government, bills need to be passed out of a committee before they can be voted on by the House or Senate. A bill will have a committee hearing, and during that hearing there is an opportunity to show your support or opposition for a bill by submitting a witness slip online. This is a great way for individual citizens to be involved in the legislative process. And it’s really fast and easy. Watch the video above or read the instructions below to learn how to fill out a witness slip.
First, you will get a link from us that will take you directly to the slip submission page. Click on that link, and you should see something like this:
In the I. Identification section, fill out your information. You are required to fill out most of the fields including the ‘Firm/Business or Agency’ section as well as the ‘Title’. If you don’t want to put your job information there, feel free to just put ‘Self’ in both fields.
In the II. Representation section, you should put ‘Self’. If you put an organization here, it means that you are slipping as an approved representative of that organization. You should only do so if you work for that organization and have approval from leadership.
In the III. Position section, refer to instructions that we shared with the link. Select ‘Original Bill’ or an amendment as specified. Also, be sure to double check if you should be marking ‘Proponent’ (supporting a bill) or ‘Opponent’ (opposing a bill).
Lastly, for IV. Testimony, just mark ‘Record of Appearance Only.’ Review and check the ‘I Agree to the IL GA Terms of Agreement’ box. Then click Create Slip. You may need to complete the reCAPTCHA before submitting, which will verify that you are indeed a human and not a robot. Any robots reading this should disregard this statement.
That’s it! You’ve made your voice heard by the IL Legislature.
