Randy Stufflebeam on the IL Constitution Party Court Ruling

This comes to us by way of a Constitution Party e-mail:

I know many of you have been waiting to hear the results of last week’s hearing, and I apologize that I haven’t been able to get that to you before now.

Our case was heard, and the Honorable Susan Fox Gillis delivered the Constitution Party of Illinois a major victory by ruling and issuing the following court order:

The Petition is granted in part and denied in part for the reasons set forth in the record;

The Petitioners shall not appear as new party candidates on the ballot for the General Elections to be held on November 2, 2010 for the reason that there are an insufficient number of valid signatures submitted.

Going into the Judicial Review, the Constitution Party was down to 22,043 valid signatures, due to the Illinois Board of Elections ruling to sustain several of the major objections back on August the 27th. Judge Gillis overruled the “pattern of fraud” and allegation, due to having not established the “hand writing expert” as an EXPERT witness. Overruling this objection restored 2,877 signatures and putting the Constitution Party within 80 valid signatures of regaining ballot access.

Admittedly, I was expecting that the court would uphold the Illinois Board of Elections’ ruling and that we would be heading to the Appellate Court, working to restore everything. I never dared hope that we would see such a huge victory. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this was due to the magnificent work that our attorney, Doug Ibendahl presented on our behalf. While this didn’t put us back on the ballot, it certainly moved the ball within striking distance of the goal.

Immediately, following the Judicial Review, our attorney, Doug Ibendahl, filed a “Notice of Appeal” with the Appellate Court.

There are two issues that the Constitution Party is asking the Appellate Court to review and overturn, either of which would restore ballot access to the Constitution Party. The first of which is the rehabilitated signatures that the Constitution Party delivered following the records review in which all signatures were compared to voter registration. We are asking the Appellate Court to review 94 of those signatures which we consider “slam-dunk cases” where you can easily see that the address on the petition clearly matches what is on the voter registration.

The second issue that we are asking the Appellate Court to review and overturn is the objection to Rosanna Pulido’s dual circulation. Overruling this objection would restore 82 signatures putting the Constitution Party on the ballot with 2 valid signatures to spare.

Yesterday (Tuesday), the Appellate Court ruled to hear our EXPEDITED case. While not unprecedented, they certainly are not bound to hear it in an expedited manner or even here the case at all. We are grateful for this and believe when confronted with the evidence, the Constitution Party will be restored to the ballot.

Today (Wednesday), Doug Ibendahl submitted our final filing which was a legal briefing containing supportive case law. The Republican Party has until 4:30 Friday afternoon to submit their legal briefing.

For a more in-depth study of the “Constitution Party’s Fight for Ballot Access,” click on the following link: http://Objections.RunRandyRun.com.

This website offers a complete chronology of our fight since we started collecting signatures in March. In addition to the chronology, a complete list of the filings and examples of the evidence are offered for you to see for yourself the level that this fight has been driven to.

If you are not familiar with the Ballot Access Issues in the State of Illinois, Jeff Ignatius wrote a great article about it which is the cover story for the River City’s Reader:

http://www.rcreader.com/commentary/how-the-establishment-restricts-voter-choice/all/