Every municipal election, candidates, lawyers and election officials alike gear up for a weekslong slog of resolving dozens — even hundreds, in some years — of nominating petition challenges, a longstanding Chicago tradition to knock candidates off the ballot for things like not having enough valid signatures.
But many were surprised this election cycle to find things were much quieter than they had expected.
Just 113 objections were filed against candidates’ nominating petitions for the 2023 municipal elections. That’s the lowest number of objections for a municipal election since 1983, when 105 objections were filed, according to a WBEZ analysis of historical objection cases heard by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners….
Dorf, the election attorney, said the optimist in him thinks it’s because “people are tired of the gamesmanship.” He has represented candidates and objectors for more than 20 years and is representing Mayor Lori Lightfoot this year.
The amount of time and money that goes into objections can be draining for campaigns, Dorf said. And, in some cases, shotgun objections “are filed by people who know that they’re not going to win, and they do it in order to take away resources from the candidate they’re challenging,” he said.
Dorf is among a relatively small community of election lawyers in Chicago who work on candidates’ nominating petitions and objection filings. Dorf said other election lawyers have told him they’ve started to take a harder stance on objection cases, even telling some clients they won’t file an objection if they believe the case is frivolous or one that won’t prevail.
“I think that’s a wonderful thing, and I hope that really is the reason,” Dorf said.
Burt Odelson, an election attorney with more than 50 years of experience, thinks the days of filing shotgun objections and “ferocious hand-to-hand combat” over ballot objections are on the decline.
One potential indication times are different is three high-profile mayoral objections were recently withdrawn. Last week, former state Sen. Rickey Hendon dropped his objection to Ald. Roderick Sawyer’s petition signatures for mayor after a heated three-hour-long hearing. The week before, Hendon, an adviser to mayoral candidate Willie Wilson’s campaign, and Kevin Hobby, an ally of mayoral candidate Ja’Mal Green, chose to withdraw dueling petition objections.
“Those days of [shotgun objections] are waning,” said Odelson, who is also Sawyer’s lawyer. “The hearing officers and the electoral boards who are hearing these cases are not allowing those frivolous objections to stand anymore, so really what you’re doing is wasting your own time, as well as your candidate’s time.”
On the flip side, Dorf thinks electoral boards have gotten more sympathetic to keeping candidates on the ballot — for example, ruling in favor of a candidate who met the signature requirement but misnumbered a few signature sheets, an error which could nullify all the signatures included on those sheets — which may discourage objectors from filing more frivolous objections in the first place.
Another theory is that fewer incumbents running means fewer objections filed. And there are fewer incumbent aldermen — current aldermen who were either elected or appointed to their seats — running in 2023 than in the past two election cycles. There are 11 wards where there is no incumbent running this year.