Judge: Spinney Stays on Ballot

Jennifer Spinney will appear on the ballot as a Winnetka village trustee candidate April 5 after a county judge upheld her candidacy Tuesday.

Spinney, who has served as a village trustee for the past two years, is seeking reelection independently after the Winnetka Caucus left her out of its picks for three open seats on the village board. 

The caucus chose instead Arthur Braun, incumbent Linda Pedian, and Richard Kates, an attorney active in village politics. It was , alleging that her nominating petitions were rife with errors. (Election law requires a candidate to provide petitions with 290 signatures from registered voters in order to appear on the ballot.)

Spinney turned in 34 more signatures than the 290 required, but . The concerned parties then traipsed in front of an electoral board, made up of Winnetka officials for a total of 292. 

, and the procession of opponents, lawyers and supporters found themselves on the next rung of the legal ladder—on the 17th floor of the Richard J. Daley Center in downtown Chicago.

There, Kates argued in front of Associate Judge Susan Fox Gillis that some of the signatures on Spinney's petitions should be ruled invalid for three reasons:

• He said four of the signers were unregistered voters.
• He said two of the signers put different addresses than the ones on their registration records.
• He said one signer wrote a telephone number instead of an address.
• He interpreted that three signatures—including one by Spinney's son—belonged to someone other than the credited signers.

"The electoral board is bound to follow the election code," Kates said. "They have no discretion to change the law." 

"Mr. Kates seems so determined to keep Mrs. Spinney off the ballot, he's misrepresenting some of these cases," said Kathleen Elliott, Spinney's attorney.

After hearing arguments from both sides, Gillis retired from the room to review the record of testimony given to the electoral board. When she returned half an hour later,  she announced her decision.

She found two of the petitions invalid—one who used a telephone number in place of an address and another who listed a temporary address—but she upheld the other five, saying she believed the evidence presented to the electoral board was  satisfactorily compliant with the "qualified voter" phrase in the election code. The decision left Spinney with exactly the number of signatures she needed to be able to run.

"The candidate will remain on the ballot with 290 signatures," Gillis said.

Kates was unsatisfied. 

"I do not think a person can testify they're a 'qualified voter' and have that count when there's no record of them being registered in the Cook County Clerk's office," he said. "You have the judge ruling there's a right to rehabilitate signatures, and I don't think that's what the law is. I feel when they're not listed in the clerk's office, they can't be rehabilitated no matter what they say." 

 "Nobody's trying to scare anybody off the ballot," Kates continued, saying that when there seems to be unregistered voters in the mix, they deserve to be questioned. He said he has not yet decided whether he will take the case to an appellate court.

Spinney was relieved.

"I'm happy," she said. "It's fair. Very few of us are that exacting. The residents of Winnetka will get to vote, and they'll vote for who they want."