Harvard District 50 school board president tossed from ballot

Harvard School District 50 board President Melinda Shafer bid for reelection was stymied Monday when she was removed from the ballot.

Harvard resident and former District 50 employee Chelsea Sennett filed challenges against three of the six people who filed to run: Shafer, incumbent board member Diana Bird and candidate William “Willie” Perez. But of the three, only Shafer was removed from the ballot for the April 1 election. With Shafer’s removal, five candidates remain in the running for four seats.

Sennett said she hadn’t planned to dig into candidates’ petitions, but people reached out to her about them and then she decided to do some research. She said she saw some red flags in some of the petitions.

Sennett challenged Shafer’s candidacy on several grounds, such as the wrong election date on the statement of candidacy and petition forms, and missing ZIP code on the statement of candidacy. Sennett raised some objections related to how Shafer got some of her signatures. In the objection, Sennett cited signatures that she said had been collected by someone else on Shafer’s behalf but which Shafer signed off on, indicating she had taken those signatures herself.

There were apparently only three signatures in question in two pages of the nominating petitions. But Norm Vinton, chief of the civil division in the McHenry County state’s attorney’s office and one of the members of the electoral board, said he didn’t think the board could carve out only the signatures in question. Instead, all the signatures on those two pages were invalidated. The electoral board ultimately booted Shafer from the ballot over the objection. The board did not review signature discrepancies Sennett cited in her objection since Shafer had already been removed from the ballot.

Sennett’s objections with Perez’s candidacy included claims that his wife, a school district employee, was collecting signatures on district time. The electoral board said that was more of an issue for the school district to deal with, not them. Perez said those signatures were collected while his wife was on breaks.

Sennett also said in the objection Perez didn’t submit his sheets in sequential order. She also challenged the validity of 33 signatures that Perez collected, according to the objection. Officials said Perez collected 132 signatures, so even if all 33 were tossed, he would still be well above the 50-signature minimum. Perez remains on the ballot.

Bird, who was not at Monday’s hearing, submitted 56 signatures, and Sennett challenged 11 of them. The electoral board checked those 11 petition signatures against the voter files and opted to remove six of them, leaving Bird with the exact 50 minimum signatures needed to remain on the ballot.

Sennett had also challenged some clerical issues with Bird’s candidacy, including a missing ZIP code on the statement of candidacy and not circling if it was a city, village or unincorporated. The electoral board said those clerical errors were not “fatal.”

Shafer could not be reached for comment after the hearing and it’s unclear if she will appeal.