Court Upholds Electoral Board Decision Rejecting Objection to Referendum Petition
An Illinois Appellate Court upheld a decision by a municipal electoral board that denied an objection to a petition for a referendum question in Peres v. Municipal Officers Electoral Board.
Village residents circulated a petition to submit a referendum question to village voters on the November 3rd ballot that stated the following: "Should the State of Illinois repeal laws that ban state investment in businesses that boycott the State of Israel?” The petition included 3,504 signatures, and on each page of the petition, the circulator certified that the signers were qualified electors and registered village voters. An objection was filed to the petition to challenge its validity and seeking to have the question not appear on the ballot. The objectors argued that the petition was invalid because it did not specifically attest that the signatures were "genuine." The village's electoral board held a hearing on the objection and voted to reject the objection, finding that the petition substantially complied with the requirements of the Election Code. The circuit court upheld the electoral board's decision, and the objectors appealed to the Appellate Court.
The Appellate Court agreed with the electoral board that the petition substantially complied with the Election Code. The Court held that the omission of a statement that the signatures "are genuine" was a technical violation of the Election Code but not one that would "impair election integrity," particularly where the objectors provided no evidence that any of the 3,504 signatures were inauthentic and there was other language in the petition that demonstrated substantial compliance with the Election Code. As a result, the Court found the referendum petition to be valid.
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