Champaign County Ballot Access [View All]

[AntiLempa]

And the fight continues. . .

It is hard for a lot of people to look at the issue of ballot access from a non-partisan standpoint. This seems to be especially true for Illinois' Democratic Party leadership. While I would much rather have local Democrats in office than Republicans, it pains me to see how hard the D's and R's fight to keep "third parties" off of the ballots. My stance on ballot access leads me to sign any candidates petition (so long as I am eligible). I've signed socialist, Libertarian, Green, etc. I would even sign Reform, Constitution or Patriot Party petitions.

It's simply not fair that it is so much easier for a D or R to get on a ballot than a G or an L. If this makes sense to someone, please explain it to me!

Here's an article covering the ongoing battle to keep Tom Mackaman of the Socialist Equality Party off of the ballot. Why is it that The Illinois Dems would make an exception to put Bush, their supposed arch nemesis, on the ballot and then fight to keep Mackaman, Nader, and the Greens off? Can it be because the R's agreed to forgive $1 million in campaign fines?

Disclaimer: The World Socialist Party is run by the Socialist Equality Party. Unfortunately few other media outlets are covering this.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/pres-j17.shtml
Green Party, Libertarians join SEP to denounce attack on third party campaigns

By a reporting team
17 July 2004

Socialist Equality Party candidate Tom Mackaman held a press conference at the University of Illinois in Urbana to condemn the undemocratic and illegal effort of the Democratic Party to remove him from the ballot in November. He called on the Office of the Illinois Inspector General to investigate the use of state employees in the Democrats’ bad faith challenge to Mackaman’s nominating petitions.

Mackaman, who is running for the Illinois House of Representatives in District 103, which represents the cities of Champaign and Urbana, was joined by representatives from the Green Party and the Libertarians who denounced the efforts to exclude third parties from the ballot.

<snip>

Miller said Democratic operatives were challenging his nominating petitions in similar ways as they were challenging Mackaman’s. “People they freely admit are registered to vote in the district are being challenged because they forgot the ‘north’, ‘south,’ ‘east’ or ‘west’ in their street address. Or they forgot to put junior or senior next to their name or a hyphen if they were married and retained their maiden name as part of their last name.

<snip>

Trigg related how the Democrats had recently made a deal with the Republicans to allow George Bush to be placed on the Illinois ballot after the official deadline to certify candidates in the state expired. Michael Madigan offered the Republicans a deal: ‘If you forgive $1 million in campaign fines against Democrats, we’ll change the deadline for President Bush.’

“The Democrats cooperated with the Republicans to put them on the ballot. Doesn’t that tell you who their real enemy is? They had a perfect opportunity to keep the person who they say is their worst enemy off the ballot, but they didn’t do it. They willfully went along with it so President Bush could take advantage of the 9/11 anniversary in New York. Yet they are challenging Ralph Nader, the Green Party and Tom Mackaman. That tells you their real enemy is voter choice.”
<more http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/pres-j17_prn.shtml>