Today was the last day for anyone in Illinois to file an objection to a petition filed by an independent candidate, or the petition of a previously unqualified or new party. No one challenged any of the four petitions turned in for president. Those petitions were for the Libertarian, Constitution and New Parties, and Ralph Nader as an independent.
The Libertarian and Constitution Parties also have a candidate for U.S. Senate listed on their petitions. The Constitution statewide petition only has 300 signatures on it. However, under Illinois rules, that is enough, given that no one challenged.
The New Party turned in a petition form that had the top part filled out correctly, listing John Joseph Polachek as its presidential candidate. It listed no one for vice-president and no one for U.S. Senate, and has zero signatures. But because no one challenged, it is also now valid. Illinois law allows substitution, so if John Joseph Polachek does not wish to actually run for president, he and the substitution committee are free to choose someone else for president, and anyone they wish for vice-president.
The two Libertarian candidates for U.S. House were challenged, as was independent U.S. House candidate Allan Stevo.
Good news for Barr: with Illinois being clearly an Obama state coupled with the dissatisfied Republicans, Barr could pull down a lot of votes in Illinois.
Baldwin too, even though only 300 signed the petition.
Well I guess Obama doesn’t believe Nader will be a threat to him in his home state.
… or everyone was asleep!
The stategy as I have come to understand it is that because the Greens and the Libertarians had so many signatures, an objection would probably not have been sustained after spending thousands of dollars by either of the two major parties. So they decided to NOT object to the other third party candidates in hope that they will siphon off votes from the other third party candidates.
This is playing with fire and the Constitution Party supporters could be the sleeper given the fact that Stufflebeam got 20,000 votes in the race for governor in 2006.
Stufflebeam would have gotten a lot more votes had he been on the ballot instead of as a write-in candidate.
I’d wager a lot of it comes down to Obama having Illinois locked down. However, the Greens are established in Illinois, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Democrats let Nader slide to “split” the Green/left vote. It’s possible that Barr could get 5% in Illinois, which would establish the Libertarian Party for the statewide offices in 2010. I’m a little surprised the Republicans didn’t challenge with that mind. I’ll be sticking with the Green (hopefully McKinney), but I’m glad other voters will have more choices.
Michael, I agree. I voted for Stufflebeam, and he got 2.8%, as a write-in candidate. This year, the Constitution Party’s U.S. Senate candidate is Chad Koppie. In 1998, he ran for governor, in the republican primary, and he got 19%.
Phil,
Stufflebeam actually received 0.5% of the vote. He received 19,020 votes with a total of 3,486,671. That’s still impressive for a write-in that received little coverage, but it’s a far cry from 2.8%.