Reply #4: Here is the Illinois LP press release on the matter

[benburch]

< This is a press release, not a copyright work, BTW >

Illinois LP demands that Republicans abide by election law - LP NEWS



http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0405/illinois-ballot-access.html

Under Illinois law, President Bush should not be allowed to run for re-election on the Republican ticket in that state, says Illinois Libertarian Party Executive Director Jeff Trigg. Trigg is trying to convince state election officials either to uphold the law by keeping Bush off the ballot or to change the law to eliminate the obstacles for all candidates.

By law, the deadline for the Illinois board of elections to certify names for the ballot is 67 days prior to the general election. That deadline this year is Aug. 27.

And the Republican nomination of Bush (or another candidate) will not occur until Sept. 1 -- at the GOP's national convention in New York City -- so it will be too late, according to state law, for a presidential candidate to run as a Republican.

"They need to live by the rules which they wrote," Trigg said. "They made their bed and now they must lie in it by petitioning to get on the ballot just like they require of us."

Bush should have made sure his party's convention was held before the Illinois deadline, Trigg continued. Since that didn't occur, either Bush should be included on the ballot as an independent -- as the law allows -- or the law should be changed for all political parties.

Since April, 2003, the Illinois Board of Elections has been looking at ways the Republicans could either circumvent the law or that the law could be changed, he noted -- adding that in November, 2003, a bill that would have changed the deadline was defeated in the state House because it would have also forgiven about $1 million in campaign-related fines, mostly against Democrat campaign committees.

Then, on March 25, the state Senate unanimously approved a bill that would allow candidates from only the two major political parties to be nominated after the filing deadline, while leaving the requirements the same for all other candidates.

"This doesn't change the deadline; it just lets them ignore it for 2004," Trigg said. "To write this into our law just for one candidate and just for one election is nothing less than favoritism and a mockery of the principles of democracy."

Republicans knew about the deadline in Illinois before they set their convention date, but "deliberately ignored the rule of law and arrogantly expected the law to be changed just for them," Trigg said.

In a March 30 press conference, while demanding that the Illinois House and Governor Blagojevich reject Senate Bill 2123, Trigg also asked that the Legislature lower the petition signature requirements for independent and minor party candidates.

The Republicans and Democrats have written the law to make access extremely difficult for third-party candidates. For example, in the race for U.S. House District 1, the Republicans need 196 signatures to get on the ballot, while "new parties" and independents need 9,793 signatures, he said.

In neighboring states -- Missouri and Wisconsin -- 10,000 signatures "would allow a political party to run for every partisan office in the state, so our demand is more than reasonable," Trigg said.

"In fact, with two-thirds of all General Assembly races unopposed in 2004, Illinois should be copying those states' election laws so more voters in Illinois will actually have a choice on the ballot."

Current state law will force the Libertarian Party to collect about 50,000 petition signatures in 90 days just to run for the president and U.S. Senate seats, making Illinois's restrictive ballot access one of the worst in the nation, Trigg said.

Libertarians running in Illinois races in 2002 got enough votes that in 39 other states they would automatically have "established party" status, with full access to all partisan races.

Instead, due to the restrictive laws, Libertarians will spend thousands of hours collecting signatures for ballot access -- forcing "money and volunteer effort to be spent on getting on the ballot instead of educating voters and promoting candidates and policies," Trigg said.

And it gets even worse, he noted.

In 1998, then Secretary of State George Ryan, who was running for governor, used employees in his office on the petition challenge that knocked Libertarian candidates off the ballot. He was recently indicted for improper use of state resources.

"The Republicans have shown they will even break the laws … in order to remove us from the ballot, so they need to live by the laws they create without getting special rights," Trigg said.