Usurping Electoral Board, Or Exercising Clerk’s Discretion? –

Pecatonica Township, Ill. (ECWd) –

While listening to Friday’s court hearing in Winnebago County related to the Pecatonica Township Clerk’s decertification of certain candidates, it was clear to us that this type of issue needs legislative intervention.

The question needing addressed in the legislature is “at what point in the election process does the discretionary duty of an election official expire, or at which point can the discretionary duty no longer be used?”

There are several key points in the election and objection processes which could be used to terminate any discretionary duties: a.) the end of the petition filing period, 2.) the end of the objection period, 3.) the instance of an objection being filed, or, 4.) the point when the election board is ordered to meet. Additionally, if the election authority exercises his or her discretionary duty, should they be required to exercise that duty on all candidates and petitions, or only those they decide to exercise it upon?

Election officials such as a township clerk, municipal clerk, or county clerk have the statutory authority to make a determination, all on their own, that a petition packet submitted by a candidate is not in apparent conformity on its face, or is not valid on its face, and decertify or decline to certify said candidate’s names on the ballot.

Residents have the statutory authority to object to individual candidate’s petition packets, which is a challenge to the sufficiency of the papers, which could have those candidate’s names not included on the ballot because they do not conform to election law.

Electoral Boards, which are typically made up of three individuals from a local government, generally includes the Clerk as a member of that board, which is also generally the person who receives the petition packets for the candidates.

Here is a short timeline of what happened in Pecatonica Township, according to the lawsuits and press releases:

1.  There were several election petition packets filed for the various township elected offices, all of them were accepted by the township clerk.
2.  Jan 22nd – The township clerk certified all of the candidates with the county clerk.
3.  Petition objections were filed with the wrong office. They were apparently filed with the multi-township assessor’s office and should have been filed with the township clerk’s office. This is because the clerk’s office was not open, or the clerk was not in her office when the objections were filed.
4.  Court action was taken to call the township electoral board to meet for the purposes of hearing the filed objections. The court directed the board to meet.
5.  Jan 29th – The electoral board met to hear the objections.
6.  Jan 30th – The township clerk issued an amended ballot certification to the county clerk, removing her father’s opponent, Gregory Deppe, and the incumbent Highway Commissioner, Thomas Menge, from the ballot for their failure to file the receipts with her office. However, she did not remove herself, her father, or the two other candidates who also failed to file their receipts with her office. She simply removed her political foes on the ballot.
7.  Feb 3rd – The objections were withdrawn by the objector.
8.  Feb 6th – The electoral board accepted the motions to withdraw objections and issued its order that the names of all candidates be certified and placed on the ballot. All electoral board members, including the township clerk who was a board member, signed the order acknowledging what the board decided.
9.  The clerk declined to certify all candidates.
10.  Feb 11th – the township board passed a resolution urging the clerk to treat all candidates the same, either remove all of them from the ballot or include all of them on the ballot. See PRESS RELEASE.
11.  Feb 24th – Candidates filed a lawsuit. See Candidate’s LAWSUIT and EMERGENCY MOTION for mandamus (seeking compliance with electoral board’s order).

You can see from the above timeline, the township clerk was a member of the electoral board while that board was hearing and deciding on objections, but also took it upon herself to use her discretionary duty in her position as township clerk to decertify only those candidates objected to (while the electoral board was convened), prior to the electoral board issuing its order and prior to the objections being withdrawn. This, in our opinion was fundamentally unfair to these candidates and the electors and crossed the line into usurping the duties and powers of the electoral board.

A Winnebago County Judge will issue a court order on Monday, March 10, 2025.