McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio said Joseph Severino will remain on the county’s March 17 Republican primary ballot because of statutory deadlines and the complexity of preparing vote-by-mail and early voting ballots, even though most other counties removed the candidate after the Illinois State Board of Elections declined to certify him.
“We were confronted with a number of bad options and a deadline,” Tirio told the McHenry Times. “We had a deadline looming that statutorily required us to mail out vote by mail ballots to our constituents.”
In early January, the Illinois State Board of Elections ruled that Severino and running mate Rantch Isquith fell 252 signatures short of the 5,000 required for statewide candidates, submitting 4,748 valid signatures.
Severino has an appeal pending in a state appellate court and has indicated he may take the case to the Supreme Court of Illinois.
The board certified other Republican gubernatorial tickets on Jan. 27, including Ted Dabrowski and Carrie Mendoza; James Mendrick and Robert Renteria; Darren Bailey and Aaron B. Del Mar; and Rick Heidner and Christina Neitzke-Troike.
Initially, five of Illinois’ 102 counties left Severino on their ballots while his appeal was pending. That number dropped to four after Ogle County decided to reprint 21,000 election day ballots to remove his name.
Severino currently appears on ballots in McHenry, Kane, Lake and Boone counties. In other counties, voters will select only certified candidates.
Tirio said reprinting ballots in McHenry was not feasible because of the county’s size and the complexity of the election.
“We really couldn’t [reprint ballots] at this point,” he said. “It may not be obvious to bystanders, but there isn’t just one ballot. There are over 1,800 variations in our county. Each must be carefully scrutinized, proofread, and tested in all equipment and tabulation software to ensure everything works correctly. That process took about 50 days for this election. Redoing the ballots at this stage would be an extremely onerous request.”
He said voters were informed that legal challenges were pending.
“It’s on yellow paper to attract attention,” Tirio said. “A similar note is posted in the polling place; both are identical in language and announce that challenges are pending in the two races: Severino-Isquith and Tedora Brown.”
The ballot dispute involving Severino coincided with a separate case involving Tedora M. Brown, a Republican candidate in the 11th Congressional District.
Early voting in DuPage County was paused to update ballots and later resumed after the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court reinstated Brown following her earlier removal. By the time her name was restored, 742 in-person early votes had already been cast without her listed.
McHenry, Lake, Kane and Boone counties kept Brown on the ballot while her appeal was pending. Cook, Will and DeKalb counties removed Severino but not Brown.
“At the same time, we had Joe Severino and Tedora Brown, both in the throes of appeals, which could extend beyond what they were currently invoking,” Tirio said. “The avenue we decided to take, which seemed the best of some not-great options, was to leave both on the ballot, including in the vote-by-mail packages, with a message informing voters that their appeals were pending, and to proceed with early voting and the vote-by-mail process. In the end, if voters chose to vote for either candidate, those votes, pending the ultimate outcome of the challenges, would be suppressed at certification if necessary.”
Tirio said legislative changes were intended to improve ballot certainty but timing challenges remain.
“They passed a law that started the election season about 28 days earlier, with the purpose of improving ballot certainty,” he said. “While it helped, counties like Cook still face numerous challenges that conflict with the need to start early voting and send out vote-by-mail ballots. Legislation could set a firm deadline for when challenges must be resolved, and the courts could help expedite the process. The courts generally do expedite, but as this case shows, it is still not soon enough.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski also criticized the handling of ballots across counties.
“It’s not as simple as one error,” Dabrowski told Prairie State Wire. “We’ve got multiple ballots, three different ballots running around in Illinois, and that breaks all the requirements by the Constitution of uniformity of ballots. So you can imagine that there will be voters who will be disenfranchised and candidates who were disenfranchised, and that’s a big problem given the election integrity problems we have, not just nationwide but in Illinois in particular, and of course the level of corruption we have here in Illinois.”
Dabrowski’s comments came after he filed a lawsuit against Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, who misspelled Dabrowski’s name on the ballot. Ammons is an ex-con whose wife, longtime State Rep. Carol Ammons (D-Urbana), helped secure a pardon that made him eligible to seek the office.
Dabrowski criticized the inconsistencies.
“Severino is on the ballot in at least five counties, and so that has other major implications for what’s going on here,” he said.
