Illinois is currently one of the few states in which a qualified party can nominate someone after the primary is over, if no one won that party’s nomination in the primary. But an election law bill that is expected to pass has just been amended to delete the ability of parties to nominate someone after the primary is over.
SB 172 was introduced on January 23, 2013, and it passed the Illinois Senate on November 19, 2014. It passed the House Executive Committee on December 1, 2014, but was amended to delete the election code sections on how parties nominate after the primary is over. This bill, if passed, would then be presented to the outgoing Democratic Governor, Pat Quinn, not to incoming Republican Governor-elect Bruce Rauner. It seems that the motivation for the bill is to reduce the number of Republican nominees for the legislature from Chicago. In recent years, the Republican Party in Chicago has had trouble placing candidates on its own primary ballot in many parts of Chicago, so the Republicans tend to nominate candidates after the primary is over. Thanks to Phil Huckelberry for the news.
Not too surprised at the “politics as usual” played by the Democratic Party bosses in Illinois.
While I think political parties are and can be good for our republic (despite George Washington’s thoughts to the contrary), it is the political party bosses which are bad.
I trust this bill – if it was motivated to reduce the number of opposition candidates nominated – will fail. Regular party members should be given the chance to seek a public office via the party primary if they desire. But if none are forthcoming, the party leaders should have the right to find candidates so the opposition party’s nominees will not win by default.
This provision should also be allowed for a 3rd party, where it does not produce any candidates in its primary election; or if ballot access is obtainable only by petition, even after the petition is submitted and approved, if a candidate can be found within a reasonable timeframe, the party leaders should have the right to find a candidate to nominate.
Never overlook the power of the voter when given a choice. Although not quite the same situation as would apply to candidates in Illinois, in California’s Top Two Primary in 2014, an American Independent Party member, George R. Williams, was able to persuade some 115 voters to write-in his name as a candidate for Assembly District 79. In the General Election, he polled slightly over 30,000 votes to the incumbent Democrat’s 49,000. Not too bad for a 3rd party candidate even if only a 2 person race.
To ensure that free elections remain in this republic, we should always allow alternative methods of allowing candidates to be nominated for public office.
SB 172 was a shell bill. It replaced “The” with “The”.
The “amendment” is 311 pages long. It effectively is an omnibus elections bill.
My guess is that there are some procedural constraints due to the impending end of the session. Individual bills dealing with specific provisions might not pass, or perhaps there are procedural deadlines.
One of the changes would eliminate the existing procedure for filling vacancies in nomination when there was no nomination due to the fact that there were no candidates for nomination on the ballot, and no write-in candidate was nominated.
That provision itself was amended in 2010 to require the nominee to file a petition with the number of signatures that they would have been required to have if they had filed in the first place.
When you blogged about this in 2010, you seemed to believe it was directed at minor parties.
It does not make sense that the Republicans could find candidates after the primary who would collect signatures, but not before the primary. If there are no Republican candidates, it is because there is little or no chance of a Republican being elected. If the Republican Party wants a candidate to establish a Republican presence, they should be able to recruit candidates and assist them in the petitioning process before the election.
In 2010, Governor Quinn did veto the bill with the petition requirement, but he did so in order to insert a totally unrelated provision. In Illinois, the governor can rewrite legislation. The legislature can then accept the governor’s changes by a majority vote, rather than attempting to override the veto with a super-majority. In that case, the legislature did override the veto.
It is possible that the legislature is bundling up a bunch of legislation in an attempt to get the governor’s signature. If it includes things sought by Quinn, then he might be inclined to accept the bill as written. If he tried to write too many new provisions in, or excise too many, he might be told that there was not enough time to consider the bill.
Merely ALL Donkey communists now in Chicago (and many other older cities) ???
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — before Civil W-A-R II happens between communist cities and rural areas.
add *fascist* before rural areas.
Think Germany in 1932-1933 or Spain in 1936-1939.