Illinois HB 723 passed the House on April 2. It makes it more difficult for qualified parties to nominate candidates. Current Illinois law lets qualified parties choose someone by committee, if no one ran in that party’s primary for that particular office. The bill says committees can only nominate candidates after the primary if that candidate submits a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast for that office in the general election (or 25,000 signatures, whichever is less).
The bill will be heard in the Senate Elections Committee on April 28 at 1 p.m. in room 400 of the Capitol.
This is obviously intended to prevent two things which would benefit second-tier parties: first, it virtually shuts down “sore losers”, candidates that lose in the primary, but then run as candidates for other parties in the general election; and second, it virtually bans smaller parties from taking advantage of races in which either the Ds or Rs fail to nominate a candidate.
This is simply an incumbent protection plan couched in tedious terms, so no one will pay attention.
Illinois has a sore loser law, so this won’t affect them.
Also the idea that this affects smaller parties more is a little off the mark. The Republicans and Democrats slated far more candidates than the Illinois Greens in 2008.
I think this law cames from frustration that incumbents feel by having to run against a candidate who maybe got slated and didn’t do any work to get on the ballot (and like I said, the vast majority of those candidates are D’s and R’s). Then the incumbents have to go through the motions — do fundraising, send out mailers, candidate forums — to protect themselves against non-serious candidates who were slated in a race they are probably going to win anyway.
But beware the law of unintended consequences. But by taking away slating, these incumbents are ensuring that any challenger they DO get will be well organized, motivated and will have already talked to hundreds of voters during the petitioning process by the time they get on the ballot.
The other thing is, this will slow the growth of any party that is established here on out. The Greens should be able to overcome this by making a greater effort to get 97% of their candidates on the ballot by petitioning before the primary. There might be a couple of cases where candidates get kicked off the ballot or come forward too late for the first petitioning period. They will have to be worth the effort…and they will necessarily have to be more organized and motivated than usual just to get on the ballot.
So the Libertarians if and when they become established in IL may not be able to run as many congressional candidates in the subsequent election as we did in 2008 — or to say it better, to do what we did in 2008 will take much more effort.
The good think this does is keep D’s and R’s from posting non-serious candidates in races where Greens are running to keep us in single digits, which happened in 2008.
Under Illinois law, the essential purpose of a political party is to hold primaries where voters who affiliate with the party may nominate the candidates of the party.
The current vacancy committee system is a backup when no person actually seeks the nomination of the party, and the primary for that office is cancelled.
Illinois permits write-in candidacies for nomination in a primary, and the petitioning standards are often quite small. For example, a Green party candidate would have required 30 signatures for the congressional vacancy in Chicago. If there is a write-in candidate for nomination, the primary for the office remains on the ballot.