Governor Blagojevich doesn’t get to appoint a successor for Rahm Emanual in Congress, so he’s set a special election to let the voters in the Fifth District decide who goes to Washington. It’s going to cost about $2 million to cover the March primary and another $2 million for the April 7 general election, even though it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the winner of the Democratic primary will take the cake.
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As near as I can tell, having studied this stuff for years, our system is designed to be as confusing as possible in order to ensure that anyone who runs, much less wins, is either backed by the Democratic machine or loaded with cash. There are a host of rules and regulations that govern the signature-gathering process: voters have to sign, not print, their names; their signatures must reasonably resemble the ones on their voter registration cards; they have to live where they say they live; husbands and wives can’t sign for each other; and so on.
This election is on such a compressed schedule that city, county, and state election officials are still hashing out all the rules that will govern it, including the timetable of the challenge process. Rest assured that however they work things out, the leading beneficiaries will be the cadre of election-law lawyers. In 2008, state rep John Fritchey brought in the big gun in election law—Michael Kasper—to blast a rookie opponent, Roger Romanelli, off the ballot in the race for 32nd Ward Democratic committeeman. Fritchey charged that almost all of Romanelli’s nominating signatures were fraudulent. This forced Romanelli and his backers to retrace their steps and go door-to-door gathering affidavits from all the signers testifying that, yes, they were who they said they were. And after all that, a Cook County hearing officer still tossed Romanelli off the ballot, saying the voters also needed to explain why the signatures on their petitions looked different from the ones on their voter registration cards.
Those who don’t use the Stroger approach will probably try to link opponents to Blagojevich, even though most, if not all, voted for him back in 2006. And they’ll all be highlighting their ties to Obama, who probably didn’t know he had so many friends on the northwest side.
Ben Joravsky discusses his columns weekly with journalist Dave Glowacz at mrradio.org/theworks. And for even more Joravsky, see our blog Clout City.
