Election season in Illinois brings the usual accusations of corruption, copious paperwork, and byzantine bureaucratic processes to get on the ballot. Here’s how a seemingly simple, constitutionally sound, taxpayer-dollar-conscious, efficiency-oriented state law can seed doubts about election integrity.
Once petition challenges are received, the State Board of Elections keeps one copy of the objection on file at the Thompson Center (a place whose glassy postmodern architecture deliciously reflects the spirit of the winding, tubular state election bureaucracy), and transmits the original and the other copy to the designated local election board that will examine the validity of the objections. (As we know, objections are just as likely to be bogus as the original signatures and therefore receive administrative hearings in which candidates and objectors have a chance to argue about their validity.) The state board itself only examines objections to candidates for statewide office (like governor or secretary of state) and for offices whose districts cross county lines. County election officials hear cases related to districts within their counties. Objections to candidates running to represent constituencies that are fully within the city of Chicago, or that overlap city boundaries, are sent to the Chicago Board of Elections for review.
It all came down to the original objection not matching its two “copies.”
Asked about the discrepancies between the three packets, Diaz-Castillo’s attorney, Thomas Jaconetty, responded with an e-mailed statement, saying that the original objection now on file with the Chicago Board of Elections “is, in fact, identical in all respects, details, and particulars” to the objection he has in his own file. He didn’t offer any explanation for why the three packets filed with the state board didn’t match one another. But another election attorney, Michael Dorf, said this type of paperwork screwup within an objector’s camp is very common. He vociferously defended the integrity of the State Board of Elections staff, too. “They’re good people and they are not partisan,” Dorf said. “It’s very unlikely that someone is involved in a conspiracy. I respect those people a great deal.”
