Inequality in Election Judging

Every now and then my local election authority sends out a desperate sounding letter seeking volunteers to serve as election judges. It's obvious they can't ever find as many judges as they need. I would consider performing this civic duty; but even though I am a citizen and registered voter in Illinois, state election law simply prohibits me from serving as an election judge.

The problem is that Illinois election law allows only members of the two "leading" political parties to serve as election judges. A leading political party is defined in Section 10-3 of the Election Code as follows:

"'Leading political party' means one of the two political parties whose candidates for governor at the most recent three gubernatorial elections received either the highest or second highest average number of votes."

Effectively, this means that while there are three legally established, statewide political parties in Illinois, only Democrats and Republicans are permitted to serve as election judges.

This is far from a mere inconvenience for election authorities--in my opinion, this is also a very serious constitutional issue. Article III, Section 3 of the Illinois Constitution wisely and directly provides:

"All elections shall be free and equal."

During the 2008 Primary Election, having acquired pollwatcher credentials, I visited a random sample of 15 polling places in order to determine to what extent Democratic and Republican election judges were treating equally all three legally established, statewide political parties. Sadly, I, and several others throughout the state, discovered that many of these judges were not treating equally the Green Party, which they were required to do by law.

In many places throughout the state, election judges offered only to voters the option of declaring affiliation with one of the two leading political parties, asking "Democrat or Republican" but failing to indicate equally "Green" as an option. I am told that in Chicago, some voters who specifically requested a Green primary ballot were either given a Democratic ballot, which is printed on green paper, or told that there are no Green Party primary ballots.

Some may be tempted to attribute irregularities such as these to error; however, unknown to most is that the Illinois Green Party actually sent a letter to all local election authorities in the state, in advance of the election, asking each to please ensure that election judges were trained on the need to treat equally all three legally established, statewide political parties. That is not what happened; but it should come as no surprise that when one established political party is denied election judges, elections may not be equal.

The Illinois General Assembly, and any member thereof interested in free and equal elections, should vote to amend the Election Code and allow members of all legally established, statewide political parties to serve as election judges.

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