Just one vote can make a difference, and we saw that political truism in action Thursday when the vote of one Illinois Supreme Court justice maintained the state’s corrupt balance of power and told 563,974 Illinois voters not only that their opinions did not matter but that they wouldn’t even get the opportunity to be heard.

The Independent Map Amendment died 4-3 on the chamber floor at the hands of Justices Thomas Kilbride, Charles Freeman, Anne Burke and Mary Jane Theis — all Democrats. Their mouths clicked in unison to deliver Ventriloquist-in-Chief and Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s very narrow interpretation of their duties and the 1970 Illinois Constitution. They claimed you and other voters do not deserve to face the question Nov. 8 of whether an independent commission should draw state legislative district boundaries rather than the legislators themselves — a task state lawmakers only managed once in 46 years without court intervention or political manipulation.

The three Republican justices all dissented, saying voters should decide this issue.

When people get kicked in the teeth, sometimes the only thing they can do about it is complain.

Last week, the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court kicked the voters of this state in the teeth by striking down the proposed Independent Map Amendment that would end gerrymandering. All the court’s Republican minority could do was complain.

“The Illinois Constitution is meant to prevent tyranny, not enshrine it,” dissenting Justice Robert Thomas said.

With his sentencing scheduled for Monday morning, the central figure in a massive corruption scheme that brought traffic cameras to Chicago remains adamant about taking his silence with him to federal prison for what could be as long as two decades.

John Bills, 55, who rose through City Hall as part of the political patronage army of longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan, faces between 10 and 30 years in prison for taking up to $2 million in cash bribes and gifts in exchange for helping grow the city’s $600 million red-light camera program into the largest in the nation.

The scheme was first exposed by the Chicago Tribune in 2012.

Four years ago, I was a partner at Sequoia Capital, where Drew Houston, Brian Chesky, and a daunting parade of dent-making founders routinely proved that disruption happens in Silicon Valley like nowhere else. But things were changing, and fast.

We saw cloud access to cutting-edge technology sprout fast-growing companies in geographies far away from our epicenter. We, in fact, came to believe (as I still do today) that while the majority of the value in technology was built in Silicon Valley over the last 15 years, a disproportionate amount of the returns over the next 15 will be built elsewhere.

At Sequoia, we took to running around the world, opening offices and funds in India and China. We were investing in Sweden, Brazil, and Scotland. We were, by the way, the firm that was at one time known for only investing within a bicycle’s ride of Menlo Park.

A half-dozen states have given ordinary citizens, not politicians, the power to draw legislative boundaries, which plays a big role in who gets elected every two years. It’s a shame Illinois can’t join them — not yet, anyway. That’s the upshot of the state Supreme Court’s decision to keep the Independent Map Amendment — a widely supported initiative, off the November ballot.

The court’s ruling is a victory for entrenched politicians of both parties, and a setback for voters who’d like to choose their state legislators instead of having those lawmakers choose their voters.

With this decision, the court turned its back on the countless Illinoisans who want a greater voice in their future and an end to the partisan gridlock that thwarts our state’s progress. It marks the second time in three years that a broad coalition of reformers was blocked from putting this important question before all Illinois voters.

Ever since it began doling out money per student for school budgets a few years ago, Chicago Public Schools officials have blamed most teacher layoffs on enrollment drops, especially the round of pink slips after the release of each year’s budget.

CPS said the layoffs earlier this month of 494 teachers and 492 support staff of were part of a “normal annual staff movement between schools” because when enrollment drops, so does funding to its schools, and with fewer students, a school doesn’t need as many staffers. As the Chicago Teachers Union criticized the layoffs, the district also pointed to 1,000 vacancies that still need filling systemwide.

Praise for the Clintons is sparse these days.