On July 4, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed SB 1586. It includes many election law changes. It reduces the number of signatures needed for local referendum petitions, from 10% of the number of registered voters, to 8% of the last gubernatorial vote.

It also says that for statewide referendum petitions, the signatures need not be segregated by jurisdiction. The Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002 requires all states to have a centralized data base of that state’s registered voters. Apparently the Illinois legislature believes that, therefore, there is no longer any need to require that a single petition sheet for a referendum contain only signatures from a single county. No such change was made for statewide candidate petitions, however.

The July 3 Salt Lake Tribune has this story, which mentions that Utah State Representative John Dougall says he favors requiring parties to pay for their own nomination process. Dougall has been in the legislature since 2002 and is a Republican from American Fork. Thanks to Election Updates for the link.

In Illinois, it is common for many small cities to have partisan elections, which are contested only by local political parties. Lyons, Illinois, in Cook County, has partisan elections for its own officers in odd year. At the April 2011 election, the contest was between the United Citizens Party and the Most Valuable Party. The press commonly refers to these two parties by their acronyms, UCP and MVP.

The MVP candidates’ petition in this year’s election was challenged, because the MVP candidates for Village Trustee filled out a declaration of candidacy on a form that was intended to be used only by independent candidates. The UCP challenged the ballot status of the MVP candidates, and the local election board removed the MVP candidates from the ballot. A local court upheld that decision. However, the Illinois State Appeals Court reversed the decision, and put the MVP candidates on the ballot. The decision is Lyons MVP Party v Electoral Board, 945 NE 2d 1175.

One of the three MVP candidates for Village Trustee, Patricia Krueger, then won the election, something she probably could not have done if the appeals court had not restored her to the ballot. This is an example of how overly-stringent ballot access laws can actually prevent the voters from electing the person they wish to elect.