Independent candidate for Congress Allan Stevo has filed suit in U.S. District Court (Springfield) against the Illinois State Board of Elections. Although he submitted over 7,200 valid signatures, the Board of Elections removed him from the ballot because he fell short of the statutory requirement of 10,285 signatures — “5% of the total number of persons who voted in the last general election within the congressional district.”
Stevo is challenging that requirement. He claims it’s “unnecessary, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.” On that last point, he claims it specifically violates the first and fourteenth amendments.
“Established parties,” as defined in the Illinois Election Code, only need 0.5% of the total persons who voted in the last general election — a significantly smaller requirement. And just to make things completely weird, the 5% requirement for independent candidates only applies in election years that do not immediately follow a federal census. (Yeah, try to make sense of that.) In election years that do immediately follow a federal census (1972, 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012, etc.), independent candidates running for Congress need only collect 5,000 signatures. Stevo uses this fact as proof that the 5% requirement is unnecessary.
Stevo is asking the court to declare Illinois’ ballot access restrictions unconstitutional, put his name on the ballot, and reimburse his attorney’s fees.
The challenge makes sense to me. I don’t understand why you should be held to different standards based on your party affiliation. Set a requirement across the board to limit the number of candidates and call it done.
Left by tsheets on July 31st, 2008