The Illinois Libertarian Party is running Chad Grimm for State Representative in the 92nd district, which includes Peoria. No Republican is running in this race, so if Grimm gets on the November ballot, he is very likely to poll at least 5% of the vote, and make the Libertarian Party ballot-qualified in this district for 2014. See this story. Currently the Libertarian Party isn’t ballot-qualified in any legislative or U.S. House district. When Illinois goes through redistricting, all of the qualified parties that are qualified in just a single district lose their qualified status, because invariably the district lines change somewhat. When the district changes its boundaries, the state assumes that it is an entirely new district and the old status vanishes.
Grimm will need 1,500 signatures by June 25. The Libertarian Party has a lawsuit pending against that deadline, however, so it is possible it will get more time. Thanks to Robert Allensworth for the link.
“No Republican is running in this race,”
Richard, are you absolutely certain that there is no way that the Republican Party could still get a candidate on the ballot for this race? I thought that it was well past the deadline for the the major parties (in Illinois, only the Democrats and Republicans currently have major party status) to place candidates on the Illinois ballot, but some Republican recently claimed that they could still place a candidate on the ballot in this race where Libertarian Chad Grimm is currently petitioning to try to get on the ballot. Is this true, or is this just a bunch of nonsense?
@1,Democrats and Republicans have to have filed for all partisan offices in Illinois back in November of last year. The only people who can file now are independents, non-established parties, and write-ins. The filing deadline for the independents and non-established parties will be in June and the filing deadline to be an official write-in candidate will be in September.
Actually I just found out that the Republican party central committee could still handpick someone to run, but they better act fast. They must have the candidate chosen before 75 days after the date of the primary. The primary was on March 20th. They have less than two weeks to choose someone so they will need to act fast if they are going to nominate someone. Since I haven’t heard of them planning on doing this, I would say it isn’t going to happen.
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“Nick Kruse Says:
May 21st, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Actually I just found out that the Republican party central committee could still handpick someone to run,”
If the Republican Party Central Committee can handpick somebody to run for office, then what’s the point of the major party nominating petitions?
I’ve never heard of this in Illinois.
In Illinois, the two major parties have until June 4 to pick somebody to run in districts where no candidates were on the ballot in the March 20 primary. In district 92, there were no Republican candidates in the March 20, primary, so theoretically the Republicans can still nominate a candidate.
If the Central Committee does pick someone, they also have to collect 500 signatures from registered voters in the district and turn those in before June 4. That is why most parties don’t go through the slating process for offices they don’t think they can win.
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