Gapers Block, an on-line Chicago newspaper, seems to be the first media to publicize the recent amendment to an Illinois election law bill that would further reduce the number of candidates for partisan office on Illinois general election ballots. See the story.
Party bosses can simply get together before the primary, recruit a candidate and assist him in his petition effort.
Were there any instances where a party made a nomination, but the nominee failed to get enough signatures?
Illinois should adopt Top 2. It eliminates the shenanigans of partisan nomination.
Yes, in 2012, about seven Republicans who wanted to run for the legislature in Chicago.
And it would also eliminate third parties in Illinois, seeing as third parties are already in a rather precarious situation in this state. Unlike states such as New York, where the requirements to remain a qualified party are fair (50,000 votes, roughly 1% of the vote), or even California where the requirement is also based on membership totals, Illinois requires 5% of the vote.
As an example of the effect Top Two would have, if Top Two were in effect in 2006 Rich Whitney would likely not have appeared on the November ballot, and would not have gotten double the percentage required to get the Green Party qualified status. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, who have corporate donors and super pacs that can poof large sums of money into their campaign coffers for advertisements and whatnot, the Green Party uses mainly small individual donations (part of our policy beliefs), and those take far longer to add up. Throw in a news media that at the regional and national level often fails or refuses to admit there are other candidates on the ballot, and the party’s candidates are drowned out of the election narrative.
And I bet that if the state legislature were to adopt Top Two, they wouldn’t change the qualified party or petition requirements (which is 25,000 signatures at present, which translates to roughly 40,000-50,000 signatures to account for the inevitable challenge to said petition). In the case of third parties, their candidates are sometimes unable to meet the petition requirements; I was one of the volunteers for the Illinois Green Party’s doomed efforts to get our candidate for governor on the ballot.
There’s no way you can’t see that the Democrats and Republicans delight in finding ways to kick third parties such as the Greens and Libertarians off the ballot. Is it really partisan nomination shenanigans you’re trying to eliminate, or alternative party/candidate “shenanigans” instead (which many other people would tend to call democratic competition)?
You’re saying that in addition to the 6 Republicans who successfully petitioned, there were another 7 who tried to petition, yet failed to get enough signatures?
Under Top 2, there is no reason to have party qualification.
Jim Riley:
Just can’t understand why you support a system (Top Two) which would eventually destroy all 3rd party and genuine Independent candidates from participating in the election process.
With a couple of exceptions, look at the “nominees” from California in 2014. They were all of the Establishment.
Do you really believe the Establishment cares for the common people?
There has a great increase in independent candidacies in California since Top 2.
If someone first voted in 1964, there would have been 12 congressional candidates across the entire state who were independents. This is over 1000 races, and it was not until 2010 that one would have had to take off their shoes in order to count them.