JQVMap - How do I set a state color in the USA Map?

My question is larger than the title. I want to apply transparency to most of the states and highlight about 6 states with a color.

The instructions on the github page are definitely written from a programmers POV. Can someone help me understand how I target individual states with CSS?

I tried, #jqvmap1_il {color:#930; background-color:#F60;} - which is targeting Illinois, but the inline CSS overrides the change.

JQVMap's documentation says you should pass an object to the colors paramerter...

Colors of individual map regions. Keys of the colors objects are country codes according to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard. Keys of colors must be in lower case.

Here is an example of how it can be done...

var highlighted_states = {
   il: '#f60',
   mo: '#f60',
   tx: '#f60',
   ut: '#f60',
}

jQuery('#vmap').vectorMap({
    map: 'usa_en',
    color: '#ffffff',
    colors: highlighted_states
});