IL: Democrats Object to Green Party Petitions at Random

Article on Political State Report by modernvertebrate on July 12, 2006.

IL: Democrats Object to Green Party Petitions at Random
by modernvertebrate
Political State Report
July 12, 2006

Desperate students know it as the old “abacadaba” method — when you don’t know the answers on a standardized test, just fill in any of those little answer circles and hope for a miracle. Well Illinois Democrats are apparently taking that strategy into the political world.

In preparing their objection to the more than 39,000 signatures collected by the Illinois Green Party for the state’s six executive offices, Democratic operatives went through the list of signatures and applied objections seemingly at random, without really checking to see if the signers appeared on voter roles, to sum up Green gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney, who discussed the filing at a news conference in Springfield.

Indeed, some of the objections are almost comical. Democrats claim in their filing, for instance, that two Peoria city councilmen who signed the petitions are not registered voters.

Other community pillars who were similarly flagged include two ministers of the Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rev. Ray Rhoads, Council President of Rockford Urban Ministries, Stanley Campbell, Executive Director of Rockford Urban Ministries, Linda Niemiec of Crusader Clinic, at least one voter registrar certified by Winnebago County, Frank Schier publisher of the Rock River Times, and the president of the local chapter of the Sierra Club.

Green Party candidate for Attorney General David Black discovered the seemingly absurd claims after analyzing 200 objections to signatures collected in the Rockford area.

Whitney, an attorney from downstate Carbondale, called these objections “plainly frivolous.”

“They will not succeed at keeping us off the ballot because we know that we petitioned very carefully to ensure that everyone signing our petitions…[is] registered to vote in Illinois,” said Whitney. “There is simply no way that both the signer and the petitioner were mistaken over 14,000 times.”

Illinois Green Party candidates for state offices turned in their stack of petitions collected by volunteers during a 90-day period between the Illinois primary and the end of June. Former Country Club Hills Ald. Kevin Williams and politically connected towing firm owner Raython Bailey of south suburban Homewood submitted the objections approximately one week later. State law requires 25,000 valid signatures for new parties to get on the ballot. A decision by the state board of elections on whether to proceed with the objection is expected in the coming weeks.