On March 16, the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously ruled that candidate petitions are not valid unless they have the statutorily required number of valid signatures. Jackson-Hicks v The East St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, 2015 IL 118929. This may seem to be obvious, but the lower state court had ruled last month that if a petition has almost enough valid signatures, it is in substantial compliance with the law.
As a result of the decision, the incumbent Mayor, Alvin L. Parks, Jr., will be removed from the ballot. The election is April 7 and some absentee votes have already been cast. Fortunately for Parks, the Illinois deadline for filing as a write-in candidate is only one week before the election, so he still has time to file as a declared write-in candidate. However, if the ballots (which have already been printed) are not reprinted, anyone who votes for him by placing an “X” in the square next to his name (as printed on the ballot) will have cast an invalid ballot. See this story. Thanks to Ken Bush for the link.
UPDATE: this March 18 story says all the ballots will be reprinted, and Mayor Parks will run as a write-in candidate.
Obviously another court cases if the votes for Park are NOT counted ???
Esp. if such votes would get him elected ???
Where is that Model Election Law ??? —
a mere 239 years after 1776.
The election law says that a candidate for partisan office may petition to get on the ballot gather a certain number of signatures. But that is as an alternative to running as a party nominee. That is the law is you can run as a partisan candidate or an independent candidate.
But East St. Louis Elections are non-partisan. State election law says that the law for independent candidates applies to all non-partisan candidates. So all non-partisan candidates must qualify by petition.
The city board of elections had interpreted the ‘may’ as meaning a candidate might gather X many signature, or they might nit. In effect, the signature count was more of a suggestion than a mandate.
The incumbent mayor had about 1/3 of his signatures dropped. The city board of elections may have been seeking a way out. (1) They could ignore pretty clear evidence that the signatures were bad, so the incumbent mayor could be on the ballot; or (2) they could disqualify the signatures, but then rule that the mayor could be on the ballot based on the idea of substantial compliance.
East Saint Louis only has about 25,000 residents (a drop of 1/3 in the last 20 years), and it is a bit unusual for it to have its own city board of elections. The last time it was proposed to eliminate the board, and use the county board of election, it was suggested that the employees would be hired by the county. But the county official had said, that he might only need one additional staffer. ESL only has about 10% of the county population.
The lower courts didn’t really say that petitions didn’t have enough signatures, but based their decisions on that the BOE was a regulatory body, and the court should defer to their judgment as long as it wasn’t crazy. The Supreme Court in essence said that the BOE had used a crazy interpretation of the law, and didn’t even mention the regulatory aspect.
The challenger in ESL has now been endorsed by US Senator Dick Durbin, and her father is a state representative. She may have got better lawyers to represent her before the Supreme Court. Not only was the court unequivocal on the merits of the case, it was clear in requiring Parks to be removed from the ballot for an election that is only 3 weeks away (April 7).
At the lower court levels, she might have presumed that common sense and the obvious would prevail.