Compiled from several articles at Ballot Access News:
On August 15, the Illinois Hearing Officer who conducted the review of the challenge to the Libertarian Party statewide slate recommended that the slate be placed on the ballot. However, the final decision will be made by the State Board of Elections.
The only basis the challengers had for arguing that the slate should not be on the ballot was that the challengers argued that certain petitioners’ entire work product should be excluded. Generally, the basis for eliminating the entire work product of particular petitioners related to questions about where the petitioner lives.
On August [1]4, two U.S. House candidates of the Illinois Green Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, in the Southern District, against the notarization requirement for each petition sheet, and the 5% petition requirement in combination with the 90-day limit for collecting those signatures. A typical U.S. House district in Illinois requires the nominee of an unqualified party to submit 14,000 valid signatures. The case also says that the requirement is particularly harsh in districts without a major population center, or districts in which the largest population center is bisected between two districts.
The case is Tripp v Smart, 14-cv-890. It is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Reagan, a Clinton appointee.
On August 13, at the end of oral argument, U.S. District Court Judge John Tharp said he will issue a ruling on injunctive relief in Summers v Smart on Thursday, August 21, at 9:30 a.m. This is the Illinois Green Party ballot access lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the challenge process to the Illinois Libertarian statewide petition is completely over, but election officials say they won’t issue a decision as to whether the Libertarian slate should be on the ballot until August 22. It is not known if the delay in the Libertarian decision is related to the timing of events in the Green Party case or not. Although the Libertarian Party showed in the binder check process that approximately 33,000 signatures are valid (25,000 are required), the challengers are now trying to invalidate all the work of certain Libertarian circulators.