Illinois currently lets qualified political parties nominate someone after the primary is over, if the primary didn’t produce a party nominee. On March 10, the House Elections & Campaign Reform Committee passed HB 723, to restrict the ability of qualified political parties to continue to enjoy that freedom. The bill is sponsored by three Republicans and two Democrats, all from Chicago or its suburbs. A similar bill made some headway last year, but did not pass last year.
The bill seems especially hurtful to the Green Party, which is a ballot-qualified party. Current law says the vacancy can be filled until 60 days after the primary. The bill would restrict that to 16 days. The process for filling vacant nominations is very complex and shortening the time will make it even more difficult. The bill also says that after 16 days, a party can still fill a vacancy, but only if it submits a petition signed by 5% of the last general election vote.
What’s the Dems/Reps motivation Richard? Is it to just screw the Greens?
The purpose is to protect incumbents from any competition. By erecting a huge petition requirement, few candidates will bother.
I could see this hurting the Dems and Republicans as much, if not more than the Greens. They slate far more candidates than we do.
Illinois has consolidated elections and general elections. General elections are held in November of even-numbered years when federal, state, county, etc. officials are chosen. Consolidated elections are held in April of odd-number years and are mainly for election of municipal and township officials.
Each election has its own primary. The consolidated primary is held in late February. The 16-day provision in the bill applies if there was no primary for a party for a office, because no candidate filed (including no declared write-in candidate). Since there are only 42 days between the consolidated primary and the consolidated election, the 16 day period is quite reasonable.
The general primary is held in early February. The deadline for filling a vacancy remains 60 days. What is changed by the bill is that, now the late nominee must file petitions for candidacy.
Since candidates can file as write-in candidates for the party nominations, there is really no reason that there shouldn’t be anyone nominated.
#1 The basic idea behind Illinois law is that a party will nominate its candidate in the primary where the voters rather than the party bosses can choose the nominees.
If you look at the election code, you will see that the 5% of the vote in the previous general election qualifies a party to nominate by primary, rather than get their internally nominated candidates qualified directly to the ballot.
And even if they don’t have any candidates running for a particular office, it is ward/township/precinct committeemen elected at the primary who have the power to nominate. In so doing, their vote is weighted by the primary turnout in the jurisdiction they represent, so in effect it is an indirect primary.
The Green Party only had 2672 voters statewide in their primary in 2008, so it is not unreasonable that if no candidate files, even as a write-in candidate, that they demonstrate a modicum of support through the petition process, if they can’t manage a modicum of activity in the primary.
The primary vote count in the 2008 was not a very good test of Green support. Although independent voters are the “King Makers” in contested General Elections, independent voters do not generally vote in Party primaries.
As Jim Riley pointed out, “The Green Party only had 2672 voters statewide” in the 2008 primary, but Green Party Senate candidate Kathy Cummings was able to draw well over 100,000 votes in the General Election.
Green Party candidate Gerard Schmitt, who ran in the 95th district, drew about 22.39% of the electorate in his challenge to Republican incumbent Mike Fortner. (the Primary sponsor of HB 723). Schmitt’s General Election vote total alone (2657 votes) rivaled the total number of votes cast in Green primary statewide.
A number of Green Party members (like me) would rather not to use state sponsored Green Party Primaries at all, we prefer to select green candidates at our own general Membership Meetings. But HB 723 would leave us little choice.
Democratic Party operatives were able to keep Kathy Cummings off the Ballot in 2006, buy just making massive amounts of random challenges to signatures on her petitions.
Signatures on General Election petitions can be challenged and found invalid for any number of superfluous reasons. If Voters move after signing petitions then the signature may be found invalid. If voters sign petitions in a way that doesn’t match how it appears on their registration card it can be deemed invalid.
In 2006 our Governor Candidate Richard Whitney even had his own petition signature ruled invalid by the Judges, because it didn’t look enough like the signature on his registration card!
HB 723 passed the chamber by a vote of 112-4. Incumbent Republicans and Democrats may not agree on very many things, but they do seem to be able to agree, when it comes to limiting voter’s alternatives.