U.S. District Court John Tharp will hear arguments in Summers v Smart on August 13, in Chicago. This is the Green Party’s ballot access case, filed on July 14. The case is being expedited because the state wants to certify the November ballot in late August. In the meantime, the “binder check” process for the statewide Green Party petition hasn’t started yet.
The Libertarian Party “binder check” process is almost finished, and it appears the party has 31,000 valid signatures. It needs 25,000. However, the challengers will next to try invalidate all the signatures collected by a few circulators, even the signatures that have been ruled valid. The same thing happened to the Libertarian statewide slate in Illinois in 1998. Even though there were enough signatures ruled valid, in the end the party did not appear on the ballot because the State Board of Elections eliminated all the signatures collected by certain circulators.
At this rate, I think the Libertarians ought to consider joining in the ILGP’s lawsuit, and the Constitution Party should too. The Democrats and Republicans seem more desperate to keep alternative candidates off the ballot than usual, and they’re usually pretty desperate to begin with.
I mean, I thought the Libertarians would be safe, but if the Establishment hacks knock out half of their signatures, something CLEARLY unconstitutional is going on, or at least it would be clearly unconstitutional in any country that actually believed in democratic elections.