[EL] Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating Petitions

Wed Apr 6 06:26:28 PDT 2016

FWIW, Kentucky is like that, at least for practical purposes.

The election authority (county clerk for local, secretary of state/BOE for statewide) will review a petition to ensure that it is valid on its face, i.e. it has the requisite number of signatures, is correctly attested, etc.  It will not determine the validity of specific signatures.

What we end up doing is a open records (FOIA) request for the voter registration cards matching the signatures (state BOE and some counties may just do the comparison for you, but many resist without a FOIA request).  If they can’t produce them, we can establish those signatures as illegible or invalid.  The we have to go to a summary court proceeding with those names, along with any who were otherwise defective (signed by a spouse, no birth date, address not in the district, etc.) and have the court invalidate the petition and candidacy.  Timing is very challenging on a statewide candidate, to get all of this accomplished before ballots are printed (and each of the 120 counties prints on its own schedule, subject to a deadline but within a broad window).

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From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Adam Bonin
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2016 3:48 PM
To: John Fogarty
Cc: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating Petitions

So we're clear: the way it works in PA is that Objectors file a Petition to Set Aside within seven days, listing by page and line the objections they have to various lines. (Voter not registered in the district, not registered in the party, line information omitted, line signed by someone other than the voter, illegible, etc.)  You can't add objections to new lines after the seven-day window, but you can under certain circumstances amend your objections to specific lines (e.g., a line once thought illegible, once read clearly, is now open to challenges on a voter's registration status.)

A hearing is promptly set in court, during which objectors (with the assistance of local election officials hooked into the online voter registration database, plus other live witnesses), have to prove their objections, line by line --though the parties are also required to resolve as many line disputes in advance as possible, again with use of the state's online voter registration records. Objectors also need to supply the court reporter and, though Kevin didn't last week, they can pay for a courtroom sketch artist.  (Really: just once in my career?)  Appeals are fast-tracked as well.

Is Illinois like that?

--Adam

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 3:16 PM, John Fogarty <fogartyjr at gmail.com<mailto:fogartyjr at gmail.com>> wrote:
In Illinois, we enjoy an adversarial system of determining whether petition signatures are valid.  In essence, any petition is presumed valid unless an objection is filed within 5 days of the last day for filing that petition.  That objection, if properly drafted, sets off a legal procedure by which signatures are validated, and ultimately litigated.  The process kicks off at 10 ILCS 5/10-8.  It is generally a highly adversarial process.

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 2:00 PM, <law-election-request at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-request at department-lists.uci.edu>> wrote:
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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating
      Petitions (weichpm at earthlink.net<mailto:weichpm at earthlink.net>)
   2. Re: Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating
      Petitions (Richard Winger)
   3. Re: Verification of Signatures on Candidate
      NominatingPetitions (weichpm at earthlink.net<mailto:weichpm at earthlink.net>)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:53:27 -0700
From: <weichpm at earthlink.net<mailto:weichpm at earthlink.net>>
To: "Greenberg, Kevin" <Kevin.Greenberg at flastergreenberg.com<mailto:Kevin.Greenberg at flastergreenberg.com>>,
        "'Richard Winger'" <richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>>, <law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
Subject: Re: [EL] Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating
        Petitions
Message-ID: <B132A571A0624BAD9046C1FDD5EE3E29 at LenovoPWPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

http://bit.ly/ConstPartyVCortes

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From: Greenberg, Kevin
Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2016 9:16 AM
To: 'Richard Winger' ; mailto:law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Verification of Signatures on Candidate Nominating Petitions

Thanks.  You don?t happen to know if Judge Stengel?s 2015 opinion is being published, do you?

Kevin Greenberg
(215) 279-9912<tel:%28215%29%20279-9912>

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