Joliet election challenges show what it takes to run for office

Getting on the ballot can be a challenge, even in a local election.

Two candidates for Joliet City Council survived challenges aimed at getting them off the ballot for reasons that at times were legalistic and hard to fathom.

“People can almost make up the objections against you even when they don’t make any sense,” said Christopher Parker, who will stay on the ballot after the Joliet Electoral Board decided in his favor Tuesday.

The challenge against Parker included a claim that the form he used to collect the needed signatures to run for office was invalid because it did not properly state the election in which he was running. The form was the same one handed out by the Joliet City Clerk’s Office to candidates who want to run for election.

Fortunately for Parker, the Electoral Board wasn’t buying the argument and kept him on the ballot.

Even so, Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who also serves as chairman of the Electoral Board, noted that he does not use the form handed out by City Hall, which includes a reference to a primary election that does not exist in Joliet for city offices.

O’Dekirk said he’s even recommended that the city changes forms.

“Our legal department feels differently about it, and that’s why it’s never been changed,” he said at the hearing.

The forms are provided by the Illinois State Board of Elections for the city to provide candidates, which likely would provide extra support in Parker’s defense.

Even so, the challenge, filed by William Ferguson, another candidate in the District 4 race for City Council in which Parker is running, can be appealed in Will County court.

Feguson’s attorney, Ryan Morton, would not say after the hearing Tuesday whether an appeal would be filed.

Candidate Michael Carruthers had a closer brush with ballot elimination at his Electoral Board hearing Tuesday.

Carruthers was able to reach a longtime acquaintance who signed his petition by phone in the middle of the hearing and get her to City Hall in time to testify that she indeed was the signer.

But for that, Carruthers could have been thrown off the ballot.

Carruthers had 50 signatures for his nominating petitions and only needed 25. But half of his signatures were invalid because they came from people outside District 5, which is the seat for which he is running.

“What you have to go through,” Carruthers said, almost overcome by emotion and choking back tears after it was over.

But Kathy Spieler, who challenged Carruthers’ petitions, argued that candidates petitions aren’t scrutinized closely enough.

The board, even while voting 3-0 to keep Carruthers on the ballot, acknowledged that Spieler had a point given the number of invalid signatures on Carruthers’ petitions.

“If this does nothing else, it should be a signal to everyone – a big red flag,” Spieler said.

State law governing who gets on the ballot is complicated enough that the city clerk’s office tells candidates that it will not advise them on the petition-gathering process.

Even so, the one want-to-be candidate who did not make the ballot, Gregory Lee, claimed that he was misled by the clerk’s office when he filed petitions to run for both mayor and City Council. He was thrown off the ballot without a hearing for filing to run for two offices, a violation of state law.

Lee claimed in an email that the system is set up to favor elites who can afford to hire lawyers to guide them.

But even if the city had not decided without a hearing that he could not run for both mayor and City Council, Lee faced challenges to his petitions that were hardly based on legal technicalities.

Signatures on his petitions included people with addresses as far away as Glenwood in Cook County and downstate Harvard. Several were from Lockport and Bolingbrook. Many had no addresses at all.