1. Subtract 40 percent, more than enough.

2. The Democratic Party of Illinois will likely attempt to knock the Green Party off the ballot anyway. I remember that during the Whitney for Governor campaign back in 2006 the challenge process required multiple Green Party representatives to sit with multiple election judges, all day long, during working hours, for a full week, to go line by line and defend each challenged signature. If the party wasn’t able to provide a representative for a particular judge, all challenges that judge considered would automatically sustained. Of course in the Green Party’s case, this required volunteers taking time off work. I was told that the challengers were on the Democratic Party’s payroll. Surprisingly, the Green Party had done it’s homework and had prepared week. Not only did they collect more than enough signatures but they did advance work to justify many of those signatures, assuming they would be challenged.

3. It is with great hope both the Libertarian and Green Parties aren’t challenged in Illinois this year. Both parties did a superb job collecting well over 25,000 valid signatures. I think it’s unconstitutional that the Democratic and Republican Parties only need to gather 5,000 signatures in Illinois while third parties and independent must gather 25,000 valid signatures. I foresee a lawsuit being filed to get rid of this unconstitutional signature requirement (it should at least be the same requirement for all parties) as well as the restriction that circulators can’t gather signatures for more than one party.

4. Unfortunately, I believe that the different signature requirements between new and established parties has already been challenged and upheld, with the court indicating that all parties within the same class are subject to the same requirements. In addition to dividing parties into new and established, Illinois election law also defines the term “leading parties” and allows only those affiliated with one these two leading parties to serve as election judges. In other words, even if a new party becomes an established party, they will not be permitted election judges at the polling places to ensure that elections are conducted fairly. This is despite the fact that Illinois election authorities struggle to find enough people willing to serve as election judges and despite the fact that I’ve personally seen leading party election judges steer primary voters into selecting a Democratic or Republican primary ballot, by asking voters “Democrat or Republican,” instead of offering a nonpartisan or other party’s ballot, even when those have been available.

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