Posted on 06/02/2004 2:59:22 PM PDT by Land_of_Lincoln_John
SPRINGFIELD -- The name "George W. Bush" or "Dick Cheney" may not appear at the top of Illinois' November 2 General Election ballot.
As the Illinois General Assembly went home on Tuesday warned they could receive a 24 hour notice to return if a budget agreement was made, there was no agreement to modify the state's election law to allow President Bush and Vice-President Cheney on the fall ballot.
“The Republicans will have to go to a federal judge and get a declaratory judgment to get Bush on the ballot,” Kris Kray, legislative liaison for the state's election board, said.
That is exactly what may happen, State Senator Wendell Jones (R-Palatine) told IllinoisLeader.com today.
"I think the federal judges would put the President back on the ballot," he said. "[Republican senators] are not going to vote for it when it comes to the floor. We want a bill that puts Bush on the ballot without loading it up.”
The Illinois Republican Party chose not to comment about the situation.
The state party's National Committeeman Bob Kjellander plays a prominent part in the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign as the Great Lakes regional coordinator.
Either a specific law modification or a court order will be required to allow the President on the Illinois ballot because current provisions do not fit with the Republican National Convention being scheduled unusually late. The RNC chose to have their convention the first week of September, navigating around the Olympics and Democratic National Convention.
SB 955 would allow the candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President until September 15, 2004 to be officially nominated by their national committees. That is the section the Republicans want.
The problem with the legislation, the Republicans say, is the Democrats have added lots more, just as they did last year when the Illinois House passed the bill only to die when Senate Republicans refused to accept the proposed changes to the election law.
All other states, except for Illinois, were able to iron out the election law wrinkles.
Last year, legislation to fix the problem was killed by Senate Republicans when they refused to allow the waiver of Election Board fines for politicians and political action committees to be tied to putting Bush on the ballot. The State Board of Elections has since acted on new legislative authority and lowered many fines substantially.
On Sunday night, the Illinois House passed in a 90 to 23 vote language in SB 955 that would allow Bush on the ballot. The amended bill made it out of the Senate committee in a 6-4 party line vote, with Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing.
“The Democrats loaded that thing up with all kinds of stuff,” explained Senator Jones, the spokesman of the Local Government Committee to which the bill was assigned. “They want to be able to register voters fourteen days before the election. It doesn’t give the county clerks enough time to turn it around and get it in the binder."
Jones said the Election Board balked at the shortened time for voter registration and the bill's sponsors were able to get only five votes -- all Democrats -- in committee. Six were needed to get SB 955 out of committee and onto the Senate floor. Barack Obama, the sixth vote, arrived late, the committee reconvened and subsequently passed SB 955 onto the Senate floor, all too late for a vote while the General Assembly was still in session.
Jones said the Republicans are likely not to support the bill this session if the bill is called for a vote as currently worded. The Senate will need three-fifths to pass the legislation after the May 31 deadline.
“They’ve got in there where you can register to vote at the welfare agencies,” he continued. “Again, they are just loading it up with things that just don’t make a lot of sense. It’s not the responsibility of a lot of state agencies to provide voter registration information. They only put it where their party would likely congregate. They basically loaded it up with things that had nothing to do with the 'Help America Vote Act.'
“They've got everything in here but cemeteries in Chicago. They’ve been voting for a long time,” Jones said facetiously. “We might as well make it legal.”
Besides accepting pregnant and hanging chads as votes with the punch card system, pro-Democrat provisions in SB 955 allow voter registration at state agencies such as the Department of Children and Family Services and public assistance offices.
SB 955 also requires persons found guilty of felonies to step down from political party offices, a problem the Republicans ran into when former Cicero Mayor Betty Loren-Maltese refused to step down from her job as Cicero Township committeeman, even while she is in federal prison.
In addition, a section of the election law on candidate vacancies has been changed to specifically allow a party's state central committee to now fill a U.S. Senate vacancy by appointment.
But if the law does not make it to the Governor for his signature, all the provisions will irrelevant.
Libertarian Party Executive Director Jeff Trigg has been watching the development of the awkward situation for over a year.
As a third party that has not had the head of its ticket win five percent of a general election vote, every two years the Libertarians must gather 25,000 petition signatures to gain a place on the ballot. The party is in the process of doing so now.
In both 1998 and 2002, Republican political operatives have challenged the Libertarian petitions. Libertarians were not on the ballot in 1998, but gained ballot access in 2002.
“There obviously is a double standard when it comes to ballot access in Illinois,” Trigg told Illinois Leader.com last year. “You can be sure, if the tables were turned and it was the Libertarians nominating their Presidential candidate seven days after the deadline, they wouldn’t lift a finger to help us stay on the ballot and, in fact, would use that to make sure our candidate did not appear on the ballot.”
Yep, I was just thanking the New Jersey courts for setting the precedent.
I share many of the views of the Libertarians, but good grief they're a bunch of whiners.
Somehow this does not suprise me. Our wonderful Illinois Democrats make me want to gag on a daily basis.
ML/NJ
I swear - politicians, especially (but not limited to) the DemocRATS have never seen a bill they could resist adding pork and crap to.
I am curious what the hang up is - GW is on all the other state ballots, isn't he?
I can totally understand why the Republicans in Illinois legislature would block the legislation as it currently stands. This is why I have a real problem with "rider" amendments to bills and legislation.
I wish there were some sort of penalty that could be placed upon those in the Illinois legislature if they don't get this squared away. I say that Illinois should not have representation in the federal government for the next year ----- Ok, maybe it's not Constitutional - but when has that ever stopped the Left?
burtleflickle!!!
They really should have considered state election laws before deciding to have the convention sooo late. IL isn't the only state with similar laws.
What did the Dems what? Give the dead the ability to register at the polling places when they go to vote?
So where are the cries of disenfranchisement?
I have to agree with you. The BC'04 campaign faced the same thing in Calif., but according to the article, that's been fixed.
Any bets on this being in the "big" Chicago papers anytime soon? I am sure that ABC,NBC and CBS will have it as a lead story tonight (sarcasm).
My 2 cents:
Illinois state law has a deadline for submitting names for the ballot. The Republicans will miss this deadline. We shouldn't lower ourselves to using Democrat Tactics (suing in the courts) to get our way. If we can't get the state legislature to change the law then Bush/Cheney won't be on the ballot.
However, since we don't have direct elections for the President anyway (we vote for Electors), the ballot should have an entry for "Electors Pledged to the Republican Candidate".
Bush won't win Illinois anyway.
I say we lower ourselves and not only sue to get on the ballot, but sue to keep the Democrats off.
Dead people vote in Illinois. Why can't a candidate not on the ballot be elected? Oh, because he's Republican.
....and I'll be one of them......I wish I could move from this rat hellhole....once proud citizen from the Land of Lincoln.
If the Illinois liberals want to officially turn Illinois into a one-party state, so be it. Just like last time, President Bush can and will win without Illinois.
Disagree. Let the rats keep Bush off the ballot. It will be a big, ugly, instructive example for all voters to see.
As Bush as no chance of countering the 125% voter turnout from Chicago's cemeteries, I don't think it matters if he is on the ballot or not.
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