Squashing the Green Bug

by Cal Skinner

My son has morphed from a 7-year old, “Dad, take the bug outside” type of guy to an 11-year old “I'll help you get rid of the ants, Mom” type of kid.

That probably led to the title of this article.

You see, the Illinois power parties are in the process of limiting electoral competition again.

It wasn't bad enough that write-ins have to register with the county clerk 60 days before the election. (That's before anyone but an insider even knows there is a possibility of winning a write-in for an office for which there is no candidate on the ballot.)

Now, Republicans and Democrats are so insecure that they want to further limit the Green Party from slating candidates.

And the Illinois Green Party, the only third party in Illinois with official party slating status, has noticed this incumbent protection bill.

Here's part of the email I received before the Senate Elections Committee voted 8-1 to shoot the bill out onto the Senate floor for certain passage:

“House Bill 723...would protect Illinois' incumbents by effectively ending the practice of slating, which will almost certainly decrease the number of competitive elections in Illinois.

"'Legislators in Illinois have an aversion to having someone run against them,' said Dan Kairis, of Elgin, who himself was slated in 2008 to run for State Representative, 55th district.

“'Rather than accept competitive elections as a necessary function of a democratic system, here we have legislators who want to avoid facing any competition in the future.'

“Kairis and other Illinois Green Party members will be attending the hearing to voice opposition to the bill. The ILGP is urging its members and anyone else interested in bringing democratic reforms to Illinois to call their state senators and tell them to vote NO on HB 723.

“To slate a candidate under current law, leaders of an established party meet and choose a candidate, based on a weighted vote.

“Slating can occur after the primary election if no candidate was nominated in the primary, or if the nominated candidate drops out or passes away.

“Currently, the three 'established' parties in Illinois who can slate candidates are the Greens, Democrats and Republicans.”

“If HB 723 passes, the process to fill vacancies in nomination would be become much more difficult, complicated and resource intensive.

“Candidates would not only have to seek the approval of party leaders, but they would also have to collect a massive amount of signatures in a short time frame.

“The additional requirements would also create more paperwork, which leaves candidates even more vulnerable to filing challenges that could keep them off the ballot.

“In fact, HB 723 would make running as an independent or creating a new party a much simpler an alternative for a candidate than running on an established party ticket.

“Despite the availability of the current slating option, in the November 2008 general election, 59 of 118 Illinois House seats and 20 of 40 Illinois Senate seats went unopposed in the general election.

"Even though half of all legislative seats go uncontested anyway, HB 723 will ensure there are many more uncontested races," said Steve Alesch, co-chair of the DuPage County Green Party, which slated a number of candidates in 2008, including an opponent to Rep. Mike Fortner (R-95th), the bill's chief sponsor in the House.

"This will have a chilling effect on democracy."

"With the scandals of Govs. Ryan and Blagojevich not far behind us, the citizens of Illinois are demanding reforms that would reduce the unchecked power of our elected officials," said Tom Abram, of Urbana, member of the Illinois Green Party coordinating committee.

"This bill is the exact opposite of reform, and it would only further erode the public's trust and confidence in our electoral system."

“The bill passed the House earlier in April with a 112-4 vote. “

Sponsored by first term western DuPage County State Representative Mike Fortner (95th District), House Bill 723 is an attempt to prevent a Green Party candidate from challenging him again in 2010.

Is that a classic conflict of interest and admission of vulnerability or what?

Fortner, who beat Green Party candidate Gerard Schmitt 32,257 to 10,024 last year, obviously doesn't want to bother with a fall election. Hard to take a fall vacation when one has an opponent.

And the DuPage County Republican Party doesn't want the possibility of a Green Party candidate running for

• county board, as occurred in McHenry County when Frank Wedig ran in the Woodstock-Huntley-Lake in the Hills district last year (getting 8% of the vote, while the lowest winner received 28%) or


• township office, as happened this year when door knocking Wedig ran only 158 votes behind the lowest Republican for Dorr Township Trustee.
  

The proposed maintain-the-power-party franchise language is below:

a vacancy in nomination shall be 8 filled only by a person designated by the appropriate committee of the political party

1. whose name is submitted by that committee to the State Board of Elections within 60 days after the day of the general primary and


2. who files nominating petitions with the number of signatures, and at the time, required for an independent candidate for that office under Article 10.

The circulation period for those petitions begins on the day the State Board of Elections receives from the committee the notice of the person's name.

The State Board of Elections shall hear and pass upon all objections to nomination petitions filed by candidates under this paragraph.

Of course, the bill passed the State Senate Committee. By an 8-1 vote. Only Republican Senate Elections Committee Spokesman Dale Righter of Matoon voted against the competition limiting bill.

In the Illinois House, only Mike Boland (D-Moline), Beth Coulson (R-Glenview), Paul Froehlich (D-Schaumburg), Keith Sommer (R-Morton) opposed the bill. Oak Park Democrat Deborah Graham voted “Present,” which has the same effect as voting “No,” because bills need a majority to pass.

= = = = =
The green bug above is used in advertising by Certified Master Arborist Wayne White. He specializes in saving ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer, which is a plot by the Democratic Party, don't you know?

Posted first on McHenry County Blog.

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Hearing Scheduled on HB5263

The Illinois Senate Local Government Committee has scheduled a hearing on HB5263 for Tuesday, April 29, 2008. HB5263 seeks to end the ability of established political party committees to easily "slate" candidates--filling vacancies in nomination and certifying candidates to be placed on the ballot where none of that party's candidates ran in the primary election.

One interesting aspect of the bill is that it requires established party candidates seeking to be slated to file nominating petitions "in the same manner as an independent candidate" which means that (1) established parties will need to find all their candidates by about August, rather than doing any last minute recruiting; and (2) those candidates will actually need to collect more signatures than established party candidates running in the primary. (The ballot access requirements for independent candidates in Illinois were held to be unconstitutional by the United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, on September 18, 2006.)

“From our perspective, we suspect that it’s possibly because of all the success we’ve had in running candidates in the primary and in slating candidates to provide more open competition in the state,” Sheldon Schafer, Green Congressional Candidate in the 18th Congressional District, was quoted as having said in an article published by the Peoria Journal Star.

The Green Party is the only statewide established, major political party in the State of Illinois, other than the Democratic and Republican parties; and this year, according to Ballot Access News, the party slated more candidates than it ran in the primary, adding 7 candidates for Congress and 1 candidate for U.S. Senate, for a total of 15 federal legislative offices. Sixteen state legislative candidates were also added for a total of 19; and at the county level, the party recruited 10 new candidates, including 5 in Cook County, to bring the total to 26 county candidates across the state.

"It had nothing to do with third parties," said Republican State Representative Mike Fortner, the bill's primary sponsor, "This doesn’t restrict them in any way.

Here is a related piece of case law for readers to discuss in their comments:

"A political party has a First Amendment right to limit its membership as it wishes, and to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform." Democratic Party of United States v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette, 450 U. S. 107, 122 (1981); California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U. S. 567, 574–575 (2000).

I would like to take this opportunity to remind readers that the process by which a political party demonstrates a modicum of support in order to earn ballot access or the right to place candidates on the ballot (usually by earning a certain percentage of votes in a previous election) and the process by which such a party actually selects or chooses those candidates are two entirely separate issues. The state obviously has a right to determine what modicum of support a political party must show (percentage of the vote) before being granted ballot access; however, once ballot access has been achieved, don't political parties, which are private and voluntary membership associations, have the right to choose whatever candidate-selection process they so desire--including slating candidates, without petitioning, by party committees after primaries?

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