On March 31, U.S. District Court Judge Sara Darrow, an Obama appointee, upheld the Illinois petition for independent candidates for U.S. House. That petition is 5% of the last vote cast, and is the second most difficult for that office in the United States. Gill v Scholz, c.d., 3:16cv-3221. The opinion acknowledges that no petitioning candidate whose petition was challenged has met the Illinois requirement for U.S. House since 1974, but says because there are six independent or minor party candidates who have collected the needed number of signatures in U.S. history, therefore the requirement is not impossible and is therefore constitutional. David Gill, the independent candidate, had needed 10,754 signatures, and there are six instances in history in the entire nation in which a U.S. House successfully collected more than that number.
The opinion is very shallow when it lists the state interest in having such a severe requirement. It merely repeats the boilerplate from Jenness v Fortson, a single sentence that states have an interest in keeping frivolous or fraudulent candidates off the ballot.
The opinion also says that it is possible to get on the Illinois ballot without completing the petition, if no one challenges the petition. This is true, but illogical. It means that a candidate with little support is more likely to get on the ballot than a candidate with substantial support. If a candidate is not challenged, that generally means he or she is no threat to anyone, probably because the candidate has little or no support. On the other hand, if the candidate has substantial support, his or her opponents will be likely to challenge the petition.
