Joliet election challenge gets complicated

A candidate for Joliet City Council may find out this week whether he gets tossed off the ballot for using forms provided by City Hall when he collected signatures to run for office.

Christopher Parker is in the position of trying to find a lawyer to defend his use of forms provided by the city and, according to Joliet officials, recommended by the State Board of Elections, for candidates who need to collect signatures to get on the ballot for a City Council election.

“These particular petitions were provided by the City Clerk’s Office,” Parker told a Will County judge Monday. “All candidates got them. Other candidates filed these forms.”

Parker, however, is the only candidate being challenged for using them.

The challenge comes from William Ferguson, one of four candidates along with Parker seeking the council seat in District 4. Others running in the district, which includes much of the East Side and areas of the near West Side, are Cesar Cardenas and Rosa Hernandez.

Since Parker is the only candidate being challenged, he would be the only affected by a court ruling. Others who used the same petition forms would stay on the ballot even if Parker is removed because the deadline for filing challenges has passed.

Time already is running short, Judge John Anderson emphasized after Parker asked for two to three weeks to find an attorney.

“I can’t hold up an election for the entire county – not just the city but for the county because the ballots have to be printed,” Anderson said.

Ballots are scheduled to be printed Feb. 7.

Anderson gave Parker until a hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to find an attorney to make a case that seemed obvious to the Joliet Electoral Board.

The electoral board threw out Ferguson’s challenge, noting that the city handed out the petitions, the State Board of Elections recommended their use, and other candidates used them.

Election law allows an electoral board decision to be appealed in court.

Ferguson’s attorney, Ryan Morton, said there is court precedent for the case his client is pressing.

The fact that the city provided the petition forms “doesn’t matter,” Morton said after the hearing on the case Monday.

A state appellate court “has ruled that you can’t rely on that,” Morton said. “It’s incumbent on the candidate to have the proper petition. They can’t rely on the local government to do that for them.”

The problem with the petition, according to Morton, is that it refers to a primary election, an election held to nominate candidates for office not elect them to office, to be held April 4.

People who put their names on Parker’s petitions “were not signing up for a guaranteed right to go to the general election,” Morton said in court.

The form, however, goes on to say that “if no primary election is required,” which is the case in Joliet city elections, “the candidate’s name will appear on the ballot at the Consolidated Election.”

That seemed plain enough to Parker that until Monday he had not felt the need to hire a lawyer to make his case. Following the court hearing, however, Parker said he would get an attorney by Wednesday.

“Game on,” he said before leaving the Will County Courthouse.