All Statewide Illinois General Election Petitions Challenged

All of the statewide Illinois petitions submitted for the general election this year have been challenged. The independent candidates for Governor and U.S. Senator will certainly be removed from the ballot, because none of them had as many signatures as the legal requirement, 25,000. The three statewide minor party petitions all have over 25,000, however, so the challenge process will be grueling.

The Libertarian statewide petition has somewhat more than 43,000 signatures; the Constitution Party petition has almost 31,000; the Green Party petition has almost 30,000.


Comments

All Statewide Illinois General Election Petitions Challenged — No Comments

  1. Of course, typical…well, the Libertarians are almost sure to get on the ballot, the Greens and Constitution Partiers are going to be iffy. I’m not sure about Constitution, but I was at one of the Illinois Green Party’s petition turn-in events. Rich Whitney and a few others did a fairly thorough job checking the signatures for the southern Illinois area. Not sure about whoever checked the Chicago area petitions though, but hopefully they did a decent enough job up there. Maybe we’ll squeak by. Maybe, assuming the Democrats (who would love to see Greens kicked off the ballot) actually follow the rules for once instead of stretching or breaking them. Meh, we’re scr*wed.
    At least we still have Paula and Wade…

  2. Just curious…were the petitions just challenged today? I thought potential petition challengers had until the 28th to do so (that’s what Ballotpedia says at least…). I’ve been following the Illinois Board of Elections website over the past several days, and the website’s candidate status showed the minor party candidates had been unchallenged up until this evening (I just found out from your website), although the independent candidates were challenged last week.

  3. Probably the State Board of Elections takes a day or so to put up the notice that a challenge was filed.

  4. Ah. Well, The Libertarians will probably make it on the state-wide ballot, and the Greens still have Paula and Wade at the very least. If we do fail to get on the state ballot, I imagine Paula and Wade would have increased support in the Congressional elections. Paula’s already polling at 9% according to one poll so far (it’s on Ballotpedia). Even if that’s inflated a bit, there’s still a decent amount of support from the get-go. We’ll make up for not getting state-wide ballot access.

  5. The deadline for objections is 5 business days after the filing deadline. Since the 5th day was a Saturday, the objection deadline is delayed until Monday.

    All the objections to the party nominations came in around 3:00 PM today (June 30). The person who objected to the party petitions, also objected to the independent petitions.

    Based on what I can find from a Google search for the objectors, Republicans are challenging the Constitution and Libertarian and Independent petitions; Democrats are challenging the Green petitions; and the initial challenge to the Independent statewide candidate is a Green (or was a Green candidate formerly).

    My guess would be that the Independent petitions are short of signatures, which resulted in the earlier challenges, while those for the party candidates requires some actual investigation.

  6. What a great system! Is there a penalty for making a challenge if the challenge is found to be baseless?

  7. No. However, a challenge is a lot of work. The challenger must say which signatures are being challenged.

  8. The election code makes it sound like a legal proceeding, with sworn witnesses, subpoenas, appeal to a court, written record of the boards decisions, etc.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there were legal repercussions for a totally frivolous objection.

  9. Why doesn’t anyone file 14th Amendment Equal protection violation on this, how many other issues has it been used on but running for political office isn’t one of them? The same Objectors for the Libertarians, Constitution, and 2 Independent Gov Lt Gov pairings. All the Objected parties should work together to keep everyone possible on the ballot.
    http://www.elections.il.gov/Elect…/ObjectionDetail.aspx… Same objectors to Libertarian Party of Illinois slate GRIMM, CUMMINGS, KOYL, ETC. V ATSAVES, GALE
    6/30/2014 3:05 PM
    PENDING

    Objectors Address
    ATSAVES, LOU 745 EAST NORTHMOOR ROAD
    LAKE FOREST, IL 60045
    GALE, GARY 481 GREEN BAY ROAD
    HIGHLAND PARK, IL 60035

    Objection Details
    http://www.elections.il.gov

  10. The Libertarians are the only ones possible to survive a challenge? The rule says 25,000 but you’ll get a few bogus signers or people who won’t give you correct address. If you only have 5,000 or 6,000 extra that means 80-85% of your sigs have to be good. That’s never been the case, the Libertarians need 57% to be good, that’s more realistic but I remember in 2002 when the Libertarians had 55,000 sigs and they were dragged out till the end of July only a couple of weeks before the ballot was to be decided. If you can volunteer for any of the 3 willing to fight but the Libertarians have the realistic shot!

  11. The challenger of the Green Party petition is Karen Yarbrough, Cook County Recorder of Deeds, and a close associate of the incumbent Democratic Governor, who is running for re-election.

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