Aurora voters are set to be asked in the upcoming fall election if the city should have a way to boot a sitting mayor from office before their term is up.
The Aurora electoral board voted Monday to approve putting a referendum question on the November ballot which will ask voters if the city should adopt mechanisms that would allow a sitting mayor to be recalled.
Also on Monday, the board ruled against including on the fall ballot a nearly identical question aiming to allow for the recall of sitting at-large aldermen, due to the petition for the measure falling below the required number of valid signatures, according to the board’s decision.
Leaders of Aurora for Change, a group that has worked to get the potential referendum questions on the ballot, called the ruling concerning the mayoral recall referendum question a “victory” that empowers voters in Aurora and beyond.
The recall mechanism, if approved by a majority of voters in November, would be the first to allow for the recall of an elected mayor of a home-rule municipality in Illinois, proponents said.
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“It’s a stark reminder that our elected officials were elected to serve and obey their people, and that their seats don’t belong to them,” said Adam Pauley, one of the organizers with Aurora for Change.
Throughout its decisions, the board cited the importance of listening to the voice of the people, represented by the thousands of petition signatures supporting the measures filed by Pauley and other organizers for Aurora for Change.
The electoral board included Aurora City Clerk Jennifer Stallings; Ald. Juany Garza, 2nd Ward; and Ald. Mike Saville, 6th Ward.
“It’s hard for me to go against the will of the people of Aurora and stating what they want. Regardless of whether I agree with the question or not, I think we should have an obligation to listen to what people have to say and support their efforts,” Saville said.
“I want to respect what the voice of the people are saying,” said Garza.
The approved referendum question will ask voters if the city should adopt a mechanism that would allow a sitting mayor to be recalled.
Under the proposed mechanism, Aurora residents looking to recall the mayor would need to gather petition signatures equal to 20% of the last mayoral election’s total votes. The recall would go to a general vote in the next election if enough petition signatures are gathered.
The mayor would then be removed from office if the majority of voters cast their ballots in favor of the recall. The Aurora City Council would have 30 days to fill the vacancy, and if there’s more than 13 months remaining in the term, then a special election would be held to fill the seat within nine months.
The proposed referendum question denied by the Aurora electoral board Monday would have allowed Aurora voters to adopt mechanisms to recall at-large aldermen. But the measure fell 240 signatures short of the minimum number of signatures required to get it on the ballot, the board said, after a record examination deemed 1,101 signatures invalid.
The group Aurora for Change, formed specifically around the recall referendum issue, submitted nearly 1,000 pages of petition signatures in early August in an effort to get the referendum questions on the ballot.
Leaders of the group claim the initiative is non-partisan and not aimed at any specific elected official, but some promoting the effort, including former chair of the Aurora Township Repulicans Danny Souri, have called for Aurora Mayor John Laesch to be removed from office.
In May 2026 when the recall efforts were first proposed, a webpage was still live on the Aurora Township Republicans website calling for Laesch to be recalled, including a way to donate to the effort. An organizer for Aurora for Change, Jayden Badillo, said at the time that webpage was Souri’s personal project.
Souri said Monday that the recall referendum effort was an “indication of the system” instead of any one mayor.
“This is an indictment of a system where the people themselves should have the actual complete right to hold their government officials accountable, whether its this mayor or the next,” he said.
Former Aurora mayor Richard Irvin, who has continually criticized Laesch’s work as mayor, has posted on social media supporting the referendum and donated $14,000 to the effort, according to his statements to The Beacon-News in mid-August.
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Laesch told The Beacon-News in late August that he worked in his off-hours to object to the proposed referendum and knocked on doors to verify signatures ahead of the objection deadline.
The proposed referendum questions faced multiple legal objections as a result of Laesch and others’ review of the petitions, but the board ultimately overturned those objections.
Those objections included whether Aurora and its voters had the constitutional authority to create the proposed recall system, whether a recall election could be held on a date other than an election day already scheduled, whether the referendum combines separate questions and whether the referendum questions are written so that the system could legally operate if voters do approve it.
Other municipalities have tried to pass recall efforts in the past few years, as the state of Illinois provides only a recall mechanism for the governor seat, not for any other elected official.
But those efforts have failed.
For instance, in 2024 there was an uphill effort to create a mayoral recall mechanism through a referendum in Chicago.
A push to recall Dolton’s mayor even made it on the ballot and was approved by the majority of voters, but it was later struck down by an appellate court.
Although more recent recall efforts in Illinois have not seen success, Buffalo Grove did recall a sitting alderman in 2010, which was seen as the first such case in Illinois history.
Now that the Aurora mayoral recall referendum question has made it on the ballot, Souri and Pauley said Monday that Aurora for Change organizers are working to register voters and get people out to the polls to vote on the measure. As part of those efforts they plan to hold a few events, Souri said.