Defeat does not have to be permanent for citizen initiatives that failed to garner enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.

The League of Women Voters of Illinois announced last week that it was not successful in collecting enough signatures to get the so-called Fair Map Amendment on the fall ballot.

The League's announcement was followed by the disclosure this week that Champaign resident John Bambenek also was unable to collect enough signatures by the May 3 deadline to get his Put-Back Amendment on the ballot for the November election.

So the status quo stands, at least as far as citizen initiatives to change the Illinois Constitution are concerned.

The Fair Map Amendment would have stripped legislators of their authority to draw the boundary lines – and thereby gerrymander – for the state Senate and House districts in which they run, transferring that authority instead to an independent commission.

Bambenek's Put-Back Amendment was even more ambitious.

It also would have established an independent map-drawing process, along with creating a Legislature consisting of one body instead of two.

Both are history now, news that will allow majority Democrats to breathe a sigh of relief. If things go as planned, House Speaker Michael Madigan will be able to gerrymander the new legislative district map in 2011 and guarantee Democrats another 10 years of control of the General Assembly, just as he did in 2001.

The Illinois Constitution was drafted to discourage citizen petitions, and that's not all bad. The state of California has tied itself in knots through its far-too-easy citizen initiative process.

There's no danger of that happening here. A citizen initiative has made it onto the ballot just once in 40 years.

For starters, the proposed amendment has to be drafted very narrowly to meet constitutional requirements and can be directed only toward the Legislature. Second, the Constitution requires citizens to collect a prohibitive number of signatures, nearly 300,000, and lots more than that to fight off potential challenges.

Collecting signatures is where the League and Bambenek fell short.

Finally, state law is stacked against the petition process, making it easy for proponents of the status quo to make sure the proposed amendment never gets on the ballot.

What went wrong here? Bambanek was virtually alone in his quest. But the League had partners, including the Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.

Despite the coalition, the League's effort failed because it wasn't organized early enough and it lacked the financial resources to succeed. Frankly, it's almost impossible to pull off something like this without paid petition-passers, and that takes a serious investment.

But defeat this year doesn't mean positive change is impossible, even if change requires a constitutional amendment.

State government in Illinois needs a thorough cleansing, but that will never happen unless those outside the process are sufficiently sickened to join together and then invest energy, time and money in pursuing change.

If that sounds easy, it's not. Legislative leaders are hostile to anything other than business as usual in Illinois, and they will almost assuredly try to punish groups that pose a serious threat to their control.

Still, it's the right thing to do. Indeed, it's the only thing that can be done if this state is ever to lift itself out of the fetid and festering political sewer in which it currently resides.