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John --
Illinois Greens Score Major Victory in Lawsuit!
Justice is something for which we constantly struggle but only
occasionally obtain in the U.S. legal system. Once in a while, though,
we get a measure of it. And we are pleased to announce that this just
occurred in the lawsuit we recently filed in federal court in the
Northern District of Illinois.
As explained in our last newsletter, Illinois has among the most
repressive ballot access laws in the nation, requiring so-called “new”
parties to gather 25,000 petition signatures from registered voters,
in just 90 days, in order to get their candidates’ names on the
November ballot. We have achieved that monumental task a number of
times in the last 20 years. However, the public-health measures now in
place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic made petitioning virtually
impossible.
Accordingly, on April 2nd, the Illinois Green Party
joined with the Libertarian Party of Illinois and two independent
candidates seeking ballot access in a lawsuit filed against Illinois
governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois State Board of Elections. The
lawsuit sought emergency injunctive relief from the petitioning
requirement during the 2020 election cycle.
Thanks to great legal work by attorneys Oliver Hall of the Center
for Competitive Democracy and Ohio attorney Mark Brown (with an assist
by our own Scott Summers), we not only persuaded the court, but even
the defendants, that the petitioning requirements were
unconstitutional under the current conditions. After some negotiating,
the parties came to an agreement that was entered into this preliminary injunction order, accompanying an opinion and order by Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer,
explaining the legal basis for the injunction.
The highlights of the preliminary injunction order are as
follows:
- The portions of the Election Code requiring hard copy
petition signatures are enjoined (suspended) for this election
cycle.
- Candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties shall
qualify for placement on the ballot for each office in which they had
previously placed candidates on the ballot in 2018 or 2016, without
having to submit any petition signatures. This covers our candidates
for our presidential ticket, as well as our U.S. Senate candidate,
Rockford attorney David F. Black. Three independent candidates will
also qualify for the ballot based on their past ballot access
status.
- Other Green, Libertarian, new party or independent
candidates may qualify for the ballot by submitting petition
signatures equal to 10 percent of the usual legal requirement, by an
extended filing deadline of August 7th. Electronic petition
signatures, using a finger or computer mouse or stylus (similar to
what many merchants now use for credit card signatures) will be
accepted for this purpose.
“This is a great legal victory, not only for the Green and
Libertarian parties, but for the voters of Illinois, who have a right
to cast their ballot for the candidates and parties of their
choosing,” said Illinois Green Party co-chair Rich Whitney. “That
right is ordinarily suppressed, and frequently denied altogether, by
our state’s unfair ballot access laws. Ironically, the extraordinary
conditions created by the pandemic both required and permitted the
administrators of that unfair system to do the right thing this one
time. We were also fortunate enough to have a judge who clearly
understood that the Constitution required the granting of this
relief.”
As a result, our presidential candidate, who will either be
longtime New York Green Howie Hawkins or Ohio Green Dario Hunter, will appear on the November ballot,
giving Illinois voters a badly needed alternative to the dismal and
nauseating choices presented by the two corporatist/war machine
parties, as will our Senate candidate Black, about whom you will learn
more in an upcoming newsletter.
It also means that Murphysboro Green Josh
Hellmann will be able to return to the ballot, joining Whitney as
a candidate for Jackson County Board. This is in addition to our
excellent candidates running for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of
Greater Chicago and other candidates already on the ballot in
jurisdictions where we are recognized as an established party. The
Green Party may be able to field a few additional candidates under the
terms of the injunction; watch our newsletters for future
announcements.
Can you help an ally in the cause of peace?
There are only so many publishers of reliable news and information
these days, and even fewer that provide reliable information on the
peace and environmental movements, and on the wars, arms races and
environmental hazards that make these movements so vitally necessary.
One of these publishers is Nukewatch, which has been providing valuable
reporting on the related threats posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear
power since 1979.
Funding is always a challenge for organizations and publications
that stand for social progress – including the Green Party – even in
the best of times. Under the current conditions, just as millions of
workers are struggling to make ends meet, so are many of these
organizations, including Nukewatch. We recently learned from one of
our members that Nukewatch is now in especially dire straits. Please
take a look at this excellent resource, and if you can see your way
clear to help out with a small donation, please consider doing so.
Chapters meetings going virtual
While in-person Green Party meetings and events remain on hiatus
for obvious reasons, our chapters are learning to adapt by conducting
video and/or phone conference calls. If you reside in or near one of
our chapters, and haven’t yet gotten involved or been
involved lately, you are encouraged to connect with them as we forge
ahead into campaign 2020. Here are just a few of the upcoming
“virtual” meetings scheduled:
The next meeting of the 50th Ward Green Party will be held via
teleconference on Sunday, May 3, at 1:00 p.m. Please contact George
Milkowski at [email protected] or call 773-262-7026 if
you would like to attend this meeting.
The Dupage Greens will meet
Wednesday, May 13th, 7-8:30pm, via online Video/Audio Conference.
Facebook event here.
The Shawnee Green Party (Southern Illinois) will have a virtual
meeting on Wednesday, May 13th at 6:30 p.m.; contact [email protected] if you do not receive
notice by the list-serve.
Illinois Green Party Outreach
http://www.ilgp.org/
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