Well, the deal to accommodate the Bush campaign collapsed, and most press accounts have the Republicans looking like the honorable party.

The deal that Speaker Mike Madigan (Chair of the IL Dem Party) eventually pushed forward would be to give the Bush campaign a waiver on the deadline in exchange for (1) allowing the State Board of Elections the discretion to waive fines assessed primarily against Democratic campaign committees (note the Board is a 3-3 GOP-Dem board and not considered to be partisan), (2) allowing a more liberal intent of the voter standard and (3) allowing first-time voters to vote absentee if they had registered through the mail so long as a photocopy of their identification, pursuant to HAVA, had been submitted to the election authority.

I've blogged some more about this at www.djwinfo.blogspot.com but I thought the Democratic deal was rather weak.

I also assume that the Bush campaign can just sue to get on the ballot, but I realize I don't have any idea what case law or constitutional provision the campaign would rely on.

Anyway, the issue is alive in Illinois until at least January. Should be a fun and interesting one.

From: "J. J. Gass" <jj.gass@nyu.edu>
To: <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Subject: Re: Illinois ballot for Bush
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 07:49:14 -0500

My recollection is that when the Republican Party announced its convention dates, at least the N.Y. Times reported charges that the timing was designed to game the campaign finance system in the manner you describe.  The Party's response, as I recall, was to deny that charge and to say that the actual reason for the timing was to hold the New York convention as close as possible to September 11.

In other words, the reason that you regard as distasteful was given as the non-sleazy motivation for the convention's timing; apparently, taking political advantage of the 9/11 anniversary was regarded as a less problematic charge than exploiting a wrinkle in the campaign finance regime.

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