Thanks for the Primary Petition

Recently I was sent a photocopy of one of the pages (Page 85) of Keith Nygren's Primary Petitions submitted last fall before the February McHenry County primary election. The sender wisely sent it to the "State on the Left" for re-mailing, so that it could not be traced to a McHenry County postmark. Good thinking!

Why was this sent to me? A resident in Union had collected ten signatures on the page from the Harvard, Marengo and Union areas, and then she had her signature notarized, as required.

The person who notarized the sheet had also signed this very sheet, and this caused me to think through the process that had taken place and to wonder whether it is appropriate for a notary to notarize a sheet on which her own signature appears.

On the one hand, why not? She had signed it as the second signer on the sheet. Eight more signatures followed.

But then I wondered whether there might be some small sentence in the election law that requires a totally independent notarization of a sheet of voter's signatures.

At this point, it doesn't matter. There were more than enough signatures that disqualifying one line back then, or even disqualifying the entire page, would not have changed the outcome of the Republican primary.

If this is an area that the Illinois State Board of Elections needs to tighten, perhaps it will. Another area to tighten is legibility of signatures on a Petition or addition of a column on the Petition page for the legible printed signature of the voter who is signing the petition.