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News :: Miscellaneous
Republicans Seek to Block Libertarians from Ballot this Fall Current rating: 0
17 Jul 2002
Modified: 01 Aug 2002
The Republican party of Illinois is challenging the legitimacy of over 29,000 signatures collected statewide by the Libertarian Party of Illinois. Libertarians collected over 52,000 signatures to get a slate of 42 candidates for office on the ballot this fall. Included in this collection was over 3600 signatures from registered Champaign County voters. In order to get candidates for state office on the ballot a third party in Illinois must collect 25,000 signatures from registered voters. The Republican effort to challenge the legitimacy of the Champaign County signatures starts Monday, July 22nd when Republican and Libertarian representatives will examine petition signatures line by line.
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The Republican party of Illinois is challenging the legitimacy of over 29,000 signatures collected statewide by the Libertarian Party of Illinois. Libertarians collected over 52,000 signatures to get a slate of 42 candidates for office on the ballot this fall. Included in this collection was over 3600 signatures from registered Champaign County voters. In order to get candidates for state office on the ballot a third party in Illinois must collect 25,000 signatures from registered voters. The Republican effort to challenge the legitimacy of the Champaign County signatures starts Monday, July 22nd when Republican and Libertarian representatives will examine petition signatures line by line.
The Republican party of Illinois is challenging the legitimacy of over 29,000 signatures collected statewide by the Libertarian Party of Illinois. Libertarians collected over 52,000 signatures to get a slate of 42 candidates for office on the ballot this fall. Included in this collection was over 3600 signatures from registered Champaign County voters. In order to get candidates for state office on the ballot a third party in Illinois must collect 25,000 signatures from registered voters. The Republican effort to challenge the legitimacy of the Champaign County signatures starts Monday, July 22nd when Republican and Libertarian representatives will examine petition signatures line by line.


The challenge to the legitimacy of the 52,000 signatures started when two voters, Irvin Smith, the Republican Party Chairman for Sangamon County and Carla Bender, elected Circuit Court Clerk for Logan County filed an objection to the signatures. Among the accusations placed were that the notary publics who signed the petitions were not present when the petitioners signed them.


In 1998, a similar challenge of the Libertarian Party petition drive resulted in the Libertarians being removed from the ballot despite 26,000 valid signatures remaining when the dust had settled. The 1998 drive to wipe the Libertarians off the ballot did highlight lots of problems with the petition challenging process. According to the Chicago Tribune, 19 of 73 state employees worked on the Libertarian petition challenge in 1998 on government time and using taxpayers money in violation of Illinois Law. Attorney General Jim Ryan never investigated the activities.


Jim Tobin, the Libertarian Party candidate for Lt. Governor has said, "The bully tactics of Illinois Republicans, especially Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, Republican candidate for governor, would make Benito Mussolini proud. The LPI turned in 52,000 petition signatures -- more than twice the required 25,000 -- and yet Ryan wants to squander as much as half-a-million taxpayer dollars to try to knock us off the ballot. This Republican challenge is outrageous, frivolous and malicious," said Tobin. "The Republicans even challenged 300 blank lines on the petition. They challenged signatures where signatures don't exist! This shows how petty and spiteful these professional office-holders are."


UIUC College Libertarians president Philip Lowman has said, "All of their claims are essentially baseless. The people defending our signatures have had to face incredible claims including that '111 Main' is not the same as '111 Main St.', WINN does not mean Winnebago County and PEO does not mean Peoria county. Bill Smith and William Smith despite having the same registered address are not the same person according to Republican challengers and perhaps the most outrageous was a claim that a missing page within a 2800 page stack invalidated all of signatures in that 2800 page stack. This entire spectacle is a huge waste of taxpayer money ironically occuring in a time of major government cutbacks in funding. It is quickly turning into a large embarassment for the Republicans. We sincerely hope that the Republicans will give up on this vain attempt to get us removed from the ballot and stop trying to invalidate the thousands of registered voters across the state that indicated they would like to see a third party on the ballot this fall."
See also:
http://www.uiuc.edu/ro/liberty
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Comments

God Save the Duocracy
Current rating: 0
17 Jul 2002
Despite some ideological differences, it's clear that the Greens and Libertarians pose a similar threat to the duopoly parties -- with the Republicans feeling threatened by the Libertarians, and the Dems, the Greens.

It would be great if somehow the third parties could cooperate for their mutual benefit -- the abolishment of the anti-democratic laws that place more significant barriers in front of 3rd party candidates. I'd think both the Greens and Libertarians would rather duke it out in a truly diverse race of more than two candidates. It would help highlight their real and true platforms and differences, in addition to calling attention to the milquetoast and flimsy platforms of the Dems and Republicans.

It's too bad that the state Republicans aren't as behind the ball as the local Democrats, who all but handed the baton to the Greens by not even running a candidate for the House election until the Greens had their's.

I wish the best of luck to the Libertarians in fighting the state government cabal. Jim Ryan is a fascist.
They gave up!
Current rating: 0
01 Aug 2002
As of July 30th the Republicans have given up trying to take us off the ballot. Press release is here if anyone is interested:

http://www.il.lp.org/article.php?id=47

Apparantly they realized it was futile, bad press, and the possibility of a lawsuit is still looming over the Republican party for their challenge. Not exactly sure what's going to happen but it's good we're on the ballot this fall.

This is good as well because if the Libertarian party gets 5% of the vote this fall in any statewide race we become a "major" party and don't have to waste money and time petitioning for over 50,000 signatures just to watch them challenge 25,000 of them and try to take us off the ballot.