On August 13, at the end of oral argument, U.S. District Court Judge John Tharp said he will issue a ruling on injunctive relief in Summers v Smart on Thursday, August 21, at 9:30 a.m. This is the Illinois Green Party ballot access lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the challenge process to the Illinois Libertarian statewide petition is completely over, but election officials say they won’t issue a decision as to whether the Libertarian slate should be on the ballot until August 22. It is not known if the delay in the Libertarian decision is related to the timing of events in the Green Party case or not. Although the Libertarian Party showed in the binder check process that approximately 33,000 signatures are valid (25,000 are required), the challengers are now trying to invalidate all the work of certain Libertarian circulators.