On September 21, U.S. District Court Judge Franklin Valderrama, a Trump appointee, upheld the Illinois 5% (of the last vote cast) petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House. Sigcho-Lopez v Illinois State Board of Elections, n.d., 1:26cv-9156. The plaintiff, a Chicago city councilmember, had submitted 17,227 signatures to meet a requirement of 10,816 signatures. He fell 1,222 signatures short because the invalidity rate was high. It is extremely common for validity rates for petitions to be high if the office is a district office. A large number of signatures invariably are from voters who live outside the district, especially when the district is not compact and has jagged boundaries.
The only state interest cited by the judge is the need to avoid crowded ballots and to “protect the integrity of elections.” But the decision does not discuss the meaning of a “crowded ballot.” Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions discuss that, but the decision does not cite either one. In Williams v Rhodes, the concurrence by Justice Harlan says that having eight candidates on the ballot for a single office does not cause a ballot that is likely to confuse any voter. In Lubin v Panish the Court defined a crowded ballot as one with at least a dozen or two dozen candidates for the same office.
Illinois has not had a U.S. House general election with more than four candidates on the ballot in the entire history of the 5% petition requirement (except in 1996, the 7th district had five candidates). It is bizarre that any sincere person can believe that Illlinois is in danger of crowded general election ballots for U.S. House.
The decision also upholds the 90-day window for collecting the signatures, the law that won’t let primary circulators work for general election candidates, and the notarization requirement. Here is the opinion.
The decision says that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ independent petition requirement for district office of either 3% or 5% of the last vote (depending on the office), but does not say that Texas law capped all independent petitions for district and local office at exactly 500 signatures.
Illinois law says an independent is not permitted to submit more than 8% of the last vote cast. In this case, Sigcho-Lopez was not permitted to submit more than 17,304. At the oral argument, the judge had asked the state why it was necessary to have a ceiling, and the response was “I don’t know.” But the decision does not discuss the ceiling requirement.
