On March 21, Allan Stevo, independent candidate for U.S. House in Illinois last year, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his ballot access case, Stevo v Keith. The case number will be assigned soon.
Illinois requires independent candidates for U.S. House to submit exactly 5,000 valid signatures in years ended in “2”, but requires approximately twice as many signatures in all other election years. This policy has existed for 30 years, and in all that time, no independent candidate for U.S. House has qualified in Illinois, neither in years in which 5,000 signatures were required, nor in years in which approximately 10,000 were required. Stevo argues that there is no state interest in ever requiring more than 5,000 signatures for that office, in light of this historical record. The brief highlights the fact that the 7th circuit decision upholding the law did not mention the leading U.S. Supreme Court precedent on cases like this, Illinois State Board of Elections v Socialist Workers Party. That 1979 decision said that there is no interest in requiring a candidate for Mayor of Chicago to get approximately 50,000 signatures, when a candidate for Illinois statewide office only needed 25,000.