On May 5, Illinois State Senator Terry Link filed an amendment to HB 723 that makes that bill less harmful. The bill, as passed by the House, makes it virtually impossible for a qualified party to nominate someone after the primary, by requiring such late nominees to submit a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast. Senator Link’s amendment lowers the number of signatures. The amendment would make the petition requirement equal to the number of signatures that the candidate would have needed if he or she had filed to run in the primary in the first place. Primary petitions in Illinois generally require only about one-half of 1% of that party’s vote at the last general election.
Even if the bill gets amended, it is still burdensome. The petitions would need to be circulated between mid-February and mid-April, not good months for petitioning in states with severe winters. Also there really is no logic in requiring petitions for candidates who are chosen by committee. The rationale for petitions is to keep ballots from being crowded, but in this case there is no primary ballot.
More points on this:
The regular petitioning period in Illinois is 90 days. Here the post-slating petitioning period would be 60 days, and that includes some of the most inclement days of the year.
Primary petitions for U.S. House and all county offices do require only 0.5% of the party’s vote in the preceding general election. However, primary petitions for State Representative require a flat 500 signatures, and for State Senator require a flat 1000 signatures. Rich Whitney got 10% of the vote for Governor in 2006. In the average State Representative district, he received about 3,000 votes. 500 signatures would therefore constitute 16.7% of the number of “primary electors” in such a district. And the reality is that in many districts the number was much lower. While he received 10% statewide, he received about 2% across the South Side of Chicago, where voter turnout is also lower per capita. It’s likely that in such districts the 500 signature requirement would constitute more than 100% of the number of “primary electors”.
If this bill passes as amended, the Illinois Green Party will almost certainly look to bring suit against the State of Illinois for the primary signature requirements for state legislature. Even if the bill doesn’t pass, such a lawsuit is plausible.
The current scheme is pure and simple a way to suppress the right of rank and file members of party members to choose the nominees of their party. Nomination by party insiders opens up the possibility of “pay to play” schemes such as that which brought down Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
It is almost trivial to qualify for a 3rd party congressional primary, especially since Illinois does not have party registration which might restrict signature gathering, and Illinois also permits write-in candidates for party primaries.
It is interesting the the Illinois Green Party wouldn’t simply challenge the signature requirements for the legislative elections. It suggests that they quite like the nomination by party insiders rather than the People.
Jim, I don’t know you or your politics, so I don’t know your bias or vantage here, but with all due respect, your comment demonstrates a complete lack of comprehension of the issues at hand. Slating has nothing to do with Pay To Play, because incumbents don’t get slated. Follow the trends: Democrats tend to get slated to legislative races in DuPage County, and Republicans tend to get slated to legislative races in Cook County.
The point about write-in candidates for party primaries is also not completely correct. While a candidate can file as a write-in for a primary, such a candidate can’t win that primary unless s/he receives as many votes as s/he would have needed valid signatures to get onto the primary ballot in the first place. For legislative races in particular, there’s simply no way that’s going to happen, for any candidate of any party.
Slating overall has nothing to do with “control by party insiders”. What it is is a bizarre but contextually useful check on the actual power of the party insiders, who have propagated screwy legal constructs designed to maximize incumbent protection. Look at the people behind this push to cripple/stymie slating: these _are_ the party insiders and the people responsible for Pay To Play politics.
As for the bizarre comment about the Green Party at the end, I’d recommend that before making such misdirected comments that you actually ask questions and learn what we’re standing for and advocating for. If you’re at this site in the first place and see fit to comment at all, then it suggests a certain level of interest in all of these issues, and it would be better to get caught up to speed on where the parties stand rather than make random potshot comments out of some vague sense of championing “the People”.
#3. It requires 16 times as many signatures to run for the Green Party nomination for the Illinois House as it does for Congress, despite the difference in the size of the districts. In every district, regardless of party, Democratic, Republican, Green, or other, the hard numbers of 500 or 1000 is greater than the number based on a percentage (1%).
It is simply impossible for a Green Party candidate to qualify to run in the primary for the legislature or to be nominated as a write-in candidate.
Yet, you wrote that the Green Party might not challenge this law, so long as the current system where the voters are bypassed is maintained.
In the case of Congress, there is really no significant barrier to run in the Green Party primary. Signatures may be gathered from any voter regardless of party. And candidates can run as a write-in.
The “pay to play” scheme for the US Senate seat in Illinois was possible only because no election was held, and an insider could choose who was elected. How is this different from the party insiders choosing the nominees in the case that no primary was held?
Jim, the bill in question deals strictly with slating, which is filling a vacancy in NOMINATION, and has nothing to do with filling a vacancy in OFFICE, which is what happened in the Roland Burris. Pay-to-play and slating have nothing to do with each other…candidates who are slated are seldom if ever elected (I’ve heard that the bill’s sponsor, Mike Fortner, did research and discovered that no slated candidate has ever won an election in IL, but I haven’t been able to verify that.)
So if slated candidates are so ineffective, why do we need slating?
1) slating gives voters more choices on their general election ballots and it means incumbents can’t just skate by
2) slating gives third parties more opportunities to retain ballot access for future elections, because a slated candidate can still get 5%, even if they have little chance of winning
3) slating gives a minority party a lifeline against a powerful machine. As much as people might disagree with the ruling machine’s politics, there are a lot of people who simply are not going to sign petitions for a non-machine party out of fear. That, coupled with high signature requirements, slating can help a minority party maintain a presence and do party building.
Also, Jim, you say that the current scheme oppresses rank and file members. The proposed changes oppresses them even more. Now, in addition to begging for the slating committee’s blessing, a candidate will also have to collect a bunch of signatures in an abbreviated timeframe (75 days after the primary with the amendment, but only 45 days where a candidate can actually pass petitions, because the slating committees can’t even form until 30 days after the election).
With its unreasonable deadlines and burdens, this bill is clearly designed to kill competition and protect incumbents, plain and simple.
#5 Any system where the voters are bypassed is inherently corrupted, whether it was the case of Illinois where they let a governor appoint a senator for two years; or where the party insiders appoint nominees.
1) If slating were eliminated, voters would likely have more choices in the primary. Under a slating system, party insiders have an incentive to discourage candidates from filing.
2) A candidate chosen in a primary would be just as likely to get 5% of the vote in the general election (or at least I can think of no plausible reason why it would not be so).
3) 30 signatures in a congressional district is not a high standard. Why would someone fear signing a candidate petition?
The proposed change is intended to force parties to nominate by primary.
Responding to Jim:
1) That makes no sense. Slating can only be used if there was no choice in the primary. For a variety of reasons, slating is not a desireable option for a party to fill their ballot, it’s more of a list ditch effort to fill a ballot.
2) Yeah, but if no candidate is chosen in the primary and you take away slating as an option, then a party is going to get 0% in the general, so that’s not particularly helpful for ballot access.
3) It’s been noted in previous comments that there are other offices with flat signature requirements, like 500 for a tiny state rep district. Also, the signature requirements the first election after becoming established, or after redistricting, are a flat number for Congress.
The Illinois Green Party didn’t create slating, the primary system or the candidate qualification process. If we did, believe me, it would be much easier for an ordinary citizen to run for office and potentially serve their community, and potentially, we wouldn’t even need slating. However, we have to work within the confines of a system that was designed to protect incumbents, keep independents and third parties out, and consolidate power into the hands of a few. Slating was one of the tools that the D’s and R’s created and have used for many years for these purposes. Until they saw us using it to our advantage in 200…now they’re trying to screw up slating so much that we can’t use it to challenge them. How is that good for voters?