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Yesterday’s “reforms” have become today’s “arbitrary” rules

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Illinois

The Chicago Reader’s new Clout City blog (which is a pretty darned good product, even if they don’t quite understand the theory behind targeted endorsements) has the Kafkaesque details of the effort to keep CTA bus driver Victor Rowans off the 27th Ward aldermanic ballot. Four years ago, Rowans was kicked off the ballot for failing to properly number his petitions…

This year he discovered just in time that he’d been circulating the wrong kind of form. Nevertheless he succeeded in collecting 1,615 signatures (he only needed 147), correctly filled out his petitions, filed on time, and started campaigning against Alderman Walter Burnett.

But Marvin Burnett, the alderman’s brother, challenged Rowans’s nominating petitions, alleging that not enough of his signatures were valid. On January 2 the case came before the Chicago Board of Elections, and hearing officer William Jones looked over several hundred signatures on Rowans’s petitions before deciding that “continuing the record examination would only put the candidate further over the minimum requirement.” He recommended that Rowans be placed on the ballot.

Marvin Burnett appealed, bringing in affidavits from about 40 residents who said they’d never signed the petitions. Rowans countered by arguing that a some of the complainants weren’t the same people who had signed. On January 11 Jones again decided in his favor, ruling that Burnett “has failed to provide a pattern of fraud by clear and convincing evidence.”

Burnett appealed again, and yesterday the case came before the elections board. After hearing Burnett’s lawyer, Michael Kasper the board sent the matter back to Jones for a final review. So for a fourth time Rowans will have to defend his petitions. “Keep in mind, I’m doing this by myself,” he says. “I can’t afford a lawyer.”

Meanwhile, the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform bemoans the ways in which technical violations are keeping people from running for office, and points to three instances where candidates were booted for “ailing to file the receipt for their Statement of Economic Interest along with their petitions” (Chicago, Decatur and Forest Park).

These rules seem arbitrary and intended for some purpose other than protecting the integrity of the election, especially since some flaws can be fixed after the petitions are filed while others, like the Statement receipt, cannot. The goal of the election is to give voters a choice among serious, credible candidates to select who is best fit to hold office. The rules should not be used unreasonably to narrow that choice to one between the incumbent and nobody else.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 9:53 am

Comments

The Illinois Green Party collected more than 39,000 signatures from Illinois registered voters, within a short 90 day window, to put Rich Whitney on the ballot. That’s at least 14,000 more than the 25,000 needed on the nominating petition. Blagojevich and Topinka only needed 5,000 signatures. Regardless, Blagojevich’s people still filed a frivilous 4,000 page objection. They used a numbered template that allowed them to simply checkmark the reason for their objection to each signature. Amongst their objections were false claims that ministers, activists, community leaders, elected officials, and even the candidate himself, were not registered to vote. They even objected to the eleventh signature on several pages, even though there were only 10 signatures per page!

The burden of prooving that the signatures were genuine and valid was then put upon the Green Party. The State Board of Elections, controlled by Blagojevich’s fellow party members, decided to conduct a line by line review of the nominating petition, using 12 election judges, at taxpayer expense, during normal business hours. The process was to last for several weeks; and if 12 Green Party members were not present at all times, one to sit with each judge, objections reviewed by that judge would simply be sustained. Of course, the Democrats were able to find 12 people that could sit with the election judges from opening until close. I wonder if these Democrats had to take time off work or if their employer was kind enough to keep them on the payroll during this time. I know Greens used weeks of vacation time in order to fight this obviously frivious challenge that most likely ended up costing the taxpayers a rather large sum of money.

Ultimately, the Green Party won. The party had done its homework, checking the validity of their own signatures in advance, including going back and getting additional signed affadavits from the original petition signers; and as a result, the grassroots was able to beat the Democratic machine. Rich Whitney got onto the ballot.

Why did Blagojevich’s people do this? Well, they didn’t do it because they believed that ministers, activists, community leaders, elected officials, and the candidate himself, were not registered to vote. They did it because they wanted to tie up the Green Party in a time consuming and expensive legal battle while Blagojevich was out campaigning. Don’t forget, Blagojevich had already had a lot of additional time to campaign, because he was allowed to have a primary election.

This comes down to one major point–Blagojevich does not believe in Democracy. He has shown distain for fair competition in our political marketplace of ideas, and he seems to have no problem using taxpayer money to prevent our elections from being free and equal. No one should ever vote for a candidate like this, regardless of party affiliation.

Comment by Squideshi Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 10:58 am
I don’t know about Rowan, but Walter Burnett, Jr. is one of the finest men I have met and worked for. He’s sincere and honest, a great political combination!

Comment by Former 27th Ward Precinct Captain Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 11:33 am
Add Quincy to the list of places where the “Statement of Economic Interests” receipt issue kept some off the ballot, at least initially. 4th Ward alderman didn’t do it in time and, at this time, officially isn’t on the ballot. However, local party (R) will almost 100% sure appoint him so not a loss of choices. The 4th Ward is a strong Republician ward. Just FYI.

Comment by Hank from Q Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 11:47 am
The statement of economic interests is the most clear cut part of filing for office.

There’s far more potential for the establishment to mess with anti-establishment candidates over signatures than anything else.

What does ICPR want to replace the current system? Candidates would file and then get a “to do” list from the gov’t. If the “to do” list isn’t finished by a soft deadline the candidates get a warning. Then if they still don’t correct the errors they’re off the ballot.

It seems like creating a significant amount of bureaucracy to address an issue that’s only a problem for a small number of candidates.

How many candidates filed in December? How many failed to file statements of economic interests?

Comment by Carl Nyberg Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 2:06 pm
Actually, if I may respond to Carl Nyberg’s comment, the point of our blog post is that candidates shouldn’t be disqualified from running solely because they don’t file the receipt for the Statement along with their petitions. Other errors are fixable after filing, and this one should be, too. Read the whole post at http://ilcampaign.org/blog/blogger.asp

Comment by David @ ICPR Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 3:43 pm
A friend that I was supporting got kicked off the ballot due to the Statement of Economic Interest. Part of what is distressing about it is that if your competition does not challenge you are on the ballot. This makes the application of the law arbitrary. What is supposed to be mandatory is only if your competition says it is. There is no reason not to allow candidates file corrections. If your signatures are challenged you can go get them confirmed as valid. Don’t bind or number your petitions properly and you are removed completely. Give me a break

Comment by Jeff Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 4:06 pm
“Part of what is distressing about it is that if your competition does not challenge you are on the ballot. This makes the application of the law arbitrary. What is supposed to be mandatory is only if your competition says it is.”

That’s not exactly true. The election authority with which you file actually has some discresion whether or not to accept a filing. An election authority need only accept a filing if it is “valid upon its face.” There is existing case law that defines what an election authority can and can not use to reasonably determine if a filing is valid upon its face. For example, there is a ruling that says they can determine that a filing is “not valid upon its face” if the petition does not contain the prerequisite number of signatures; and in that case, they need not even accept your filing. On the other hand, there’s a ruling that says they can not “on the face” of the document determine if the signers are registered voters or live in-district, so these factors can not be used in order to refuse a filing.

I’ve already had this argument with my county State’s Attorney. I attempted to file a petition to place an advisory referendum on the ballot throughout the county but had only collected one signature–my own. The petition met all other legal requirements; but despite the fact that there was no objection filed, the County Clerk was simply able to refuse the filing because it was not “valid upon its face.”

Interesting that the State Board of Elections let a candidate run for Governor with only one signature (they accepted the filing) but depending on the issue, your filing might be refused even without an objection, isn’t it?

Comment by Squideshi Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 8:19 pm
I posted essentially the same response to this topic over at the ICPR blog, and it got deleted. David said that it was overlong and off topic. I’m not convinced that was the reason–I think it may have been because it makes the Governor look bad.

Comment by Squideshi Thursday, Jan 18, 07 @ 8:27 pm