Bill Scheuer is a member of the Illinois Green Party who is seeking his party’s nomination for the U.S. House, 8th district. A Democratic Party official challenged his petition to be on the Green Party primary ballot, but the State Board of Elections recently deadlocked, 4-4, on whether to remove him from the Green Party primary ballot. On a tie vote, the candidate remains on the ballot. See this story.
The 8th district was not close in 2008, when only the Democratic and Republican Party had nominees on the November ballot. The 2008 vote was: Melissa Bean, Democrat, 179,444 votes; Steve Greenberg, Republican, 116,081 votes.
With early/absentee voting, they really don’t leave a lot of time for these ballot access issues to be resolved before the ballots have to be printed up. One more good reason to simplify the process.
On what grounds do Democrats have standing to challenge a candidate’s nomination petition in a Green Party primary election? No doubt the statute permits anyone to file such a challenge, but it shouldn’t. Imagine if courts policed standing in the ballot access context the way they do with respect to environmental statutes. This would never be permitted. Democrats have no legitimate interest in interfering with Green Party primary elections – much less can they demonstrate injury, causation and redressability.
The statute provides that any voter in the jursidiction for the office may object. Illinois would probably claim that their procedures protect the integrity of elections since it doesn’t depend solely on government officials for enforcement.
Illinois election officials don’t actually count petition signatures, but rule based on objections. If objections were limited to party members, there might not be any objections to insufficient signatures, except in cases where one party member is trying to keep competitors off the primary ballot (as Barack Obama did when he first ran for the state senate).
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