3/25/2022
The party that complains the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen and constantly clamours on about election integrity, can’t seem to follow the law around elections in McLean County. So much for law & order.
Five Republican candidates for the McLean County Board, including the current board chairman, face possible removal from the June primary ballot because of technical errors with the nominating petitions they filed earlier this month.
The challenges allege the candidates didn’t number the pages to the documents, as is required.Candidates accused of violating that rule are District 1 incumbent board member Catherine Metsker, County Board Chair John McIntyre and Hannah Blumenshine – both from District 5, Vicki Schultz in District 8, and Annette Fellows in District 9. District 2 Board member and Vice-Chair of the board Jim Soeldner also broke the same rule, though no one from his district came forward to challenge his ballots.
An electoral board, composed of all Republicans is planning to review the challenges Monday. If the board votes to remove the candidates, those candidates can still appeal directly to a judge for relief.
McLean County GOP Chair Connie Beard responded to the challenges thusly:
It was announced Tuesday that members of the Democratic party in McLean County filed objections to 5 Republican County Board candidates on the petty basis of an omission of numbering the petition pages. Now a commission must be held at taxpayer expense to review the objections.
We, as Republicans, had the same opportunity on Monday to challenge and call for the removal of Democratic candidates who made the very same mistake. However, McLean County Republicans believe voters need a choice at the ballot box and we will never give up in that effort. That’s why despite this petty attempt to deprive voters of their right to choose, we will slate these very same dedicated McLean County public servants to be on the ballot for November.
The Democrats who took this hypocritical path knew these same candidates could be slated following the June Primary. Yet, they still took the low road to make a headline. Republicans had the same opportunity to try to remove local democratic candidates from the ballot, but we chose the high road. This action has caused a waste of taxpayer dollars, clear and simple.”
McLean County GOP Chair Connie Beard
Beard is a Stop-the-Steal delusionists who contends Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. It appears the McGOP, who contend they are the fiscal conservatives, are extremely mathematically challenged. Not only do they not realize that the 81,268,924 votes for President Biden is a higher number than the 74,216,154 votes for Trump, the McGOP apparently has trouble even numbering pages. (By the way, the number of signatures required to get on the ballot as a Republican is 24 or two and a half pages.) We should not make fun of those poor unfortunates who are mathematically illiterate. This is all the more reason for universal, free education, to get these conservatives the math tutoring they so desperately need.
In all seriousness, this is unlikely to actually stop these candidates from being on the November ballot. If the Republican candidates are removed from the ballot, they can still run in the primary as a write-in ballot (most of them are unopposed). If no candidate runs for the primary, the party is allowed to just choose a nominee for the party to be on the ballot.
How nice and cozy it must be for a political party to just choose the candidates on the ballot by fiat. Republicans running for County Board need a minimum of 24 signatures to get on the ballot. Democrats & Libertarians only need 17. If someone wants to run as an independent, they would need a minimum of four hundred and forty signatures. Even at the local level, the Democrat-Republican Capitalist parties have a strangle-hold over the electoral process, shutting out voices which might dissent from the party line of neoliberalism.
Patrick Cortesi, McLean County Democrats’ chair, said in the following statement:
I’m not going to weigh in on the details of a pending case. But I will say this: If the voters in those districts have questions about the legality of a potential candidate’s petitions, it is absolutely their right to have it investigated. They deserve to know if their potential elected representatives are capable of following the rules.”
