meroni v il sboe 7th judicial district sangamon county (administrative review) transcript - sept 23...

8/8/2019 MERONI v IL SBoE 7th Judicial District Sangamon County (Administrative Review) Transcript - Sept 23 2010.PDF - Ad

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1 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR THE SEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT

2 SANGAMON COUNTY, ILLINOIS

3 SHARON ANN MERONI,

4 Plaintiff,

5 -vs- NO. 2010-MR-501

6 ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS, ET AL,

7 Defendants.

8 ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW

9 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS of the hearing held

10 before the Honorable PETE C. CAVANAGH on the 23th day of

11 September, 2010.

12 APPEARANCES:

13 MS. SHARON MERONI

Plaintiff, Pro se.

14

15 THE HONORABLE LISA MADIGAN

Attorney General of the State of Illinois, by16 MS. JESSICA REESE,

Assistant Attorney General

17 for the Defendants.

18

19

20

21 LAURA K. BERRY, CSR#084-1931Official Court Reporter

22 716 Sangamon County Complex

Springfield, IL 62701

23 (217) 753-6813

24


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3 I N D E X

4 WITNESSES DIRECT CROSS

5 None

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15 EXHIBITS

16 None

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3 P R O C E E D I N G S

4 THE COURT: All right, this is 10-MR-501, Sharon

5 Ann Meroni, Plaintiff, versus Illinois State Board of

6 Education, Defendants.

7 MS. MERONI: Board of Elections, did you put

8 Education in there?

9 THE COURT: Did I say that, pardon me, Illinois

10 state Board of Elections, Defendant, pardon me.

11 All right, the discovery process proceeded

12 without incident then?

13 MS. MERONI: Yes, Your Honor.

14 THE COURT: Very well. I appreciate the parties

15 working together on our expedited discovery schedule.

16 Are you ready to proceed then?

17 MS. MERONI: Yes, Your Honor.

18 THE COURT: All right, counsel, you may argue at

19 this time.

20 MS. MERONI: Which one would you like to hear

21 first, Judge?

22 THE COURT: The burden, who has got the burden?

23 MS. MERONI: Well, I have never argued a case

24 before, so I am hoping that I do this properly. The --


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1 I believe --

2 THE COURT: It is helpful, why don't we look to the

3 outline of your Complaint and summarize your case for

4 the Court?

5 MS. MERONI: Well, my Complaint is on the complex

6 side, because it involves points of law, strictly, and

7 as I mentioned in my introduction that I have tried

8 numerous different processes in order to find out

9 whether or not my ballot is -- contains constitutionally

10 eligible candidates on it, and through that discovery

11 process, I have learned a variety of bits of different

12 information on one of those, is that the Board of

13 Elections is required to not certify for ballot

14 placement anybody that doesn't meet the standard

15 conformity, apparent conformity standards, and by them

16 not certifying or by their not obeying that law and the

17 judicial mandates such as you find in Druck, essentially

18 out of the thirty-two candidates that I objected to,

19 sixteen of them were removed for apparent conformity

20 standards, which meant that it offered confusion and

21 disarray to the process, especially since those sixteen

22 had been viewed at the face of their petition.

23 When the -- when the nominating papers

24 were actually delivered, they should not have been


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1 placed on the ballot. The majority of them lacked

2 sufficient signature as to even come close to being

3 on the ballot or to be of actually certified

4 positioning on the ballot, one of them lacked his

5 Statement of Economic Interest, so the Board of

6 Elections has been disobeying and disregarding the

7 laws of the State of Illinois, as well as the

8 judicial decisions, and has been refusing to use

9 concepts of standard conformity, apparent

10 conformity, and that is one of the issues that I

11 raised and that I would like the judge, the Court to

12 rule upon that, compelling them through a mandamus

13 to -- which I would like to write to enforce them to

14 use apparent conformity standards before they

15 represent a slate of potential candidates for us to

16 review.

17 Now my petition on its face basically has

18 four parts to it, my original complaining petition,

19 and I am speaking of the one that is for the

20 objections for the Board of Elections, and the first

21 section of that primarily states that my name and my

22 interest and my interests are unopposed in the

23 matter, and after my interests, I make a very

24 definite statement of law, and I -- I will tell you,


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1 Your Honor, I struggled quite a bit with what to

2 write in my petition, because I am asking, you

3 know -- I see nothing in the statutes that say I'm

4 not allowed to know if candidates running for office

5 are legally qualified. There is no definition in

6 the Code that I can find that specifically lays out

7 what legally qualified means, and when you look at

8 that statement, it would be a subjective statement

9 that the candidate then self-certifies and says that

10 they are legally qualified.

11 Now I am afforded a five day period to

12 contest these candidates and their application to be

13 on the ballot, but with no fact in the public

14 record, I lose that due process right to assess them

15 according to what legally qualified means.

16 Now the petition that -- my petition, my

17 original objections were difficult to write because

18 on the one hand I have the right to assess these

19 candidates as to whether or not they are legally

20 qualified, on the other hand, the State refused to

21 ask for any proof that would allow me to exercise

22 that right, so I would put forth to the Court that's

23 a question of law that needs to be addressed,

24 because it is a -- you know, definitely a due


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1 process situation where I am allowed to -- you know,

2 afforded the right to assess my candidates, but not

3 the information of which I can do so, and so my

4 second part of that, my petition basically is very

5 clear, and I -- as I said, I struggled with it, and

6 what I essentially wrote is that I affirmed the law,

7 and the law states that, here I go getting nervous

8 again, that the candidates are required to -- here

9 we go, sorry about that.

10 THE COURT: Are you reading from your petition?

11 MS. MERONI: Yeah, I'm sorry. I just wanted to get

12 the wording.

13 All candidates must be a specific age and

14 be citizens of the United States to hold office in

15 Illinois, and that's an affirmative statement, and

16 my petition needs to be read in its entirety, and

17 what the Board chose to do is just to take one

18 paragraph and isolate it from the rest, and then

19 because the third part was that these papers are

20 unsufficient because they failed to demonstrate or

21 provide documentation that the candidates meet the

22 recommendation, and they said that that was

23 problematic in there because it did not give an

24 exact remedy, but if the papers are insufficient and


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1 the Board is doing their job, then the remedy is the

2 candidates don't go on the ballot.

3 Now -- and so in my view, in order to

4 exercise my right of discerning whether or not these

5 candidates are actually legally qualified to be, so

6 I had to be very careful, because if I put down,

7 well, there is no birth certificate there and the

8 Board doesn't ask for it, then they would have

9 slammed me down because I was asking for something

10 that they don't ask for themselves, and the other

11 aspect of this is that, you know, in the very

12 arrogance of the Board's game, they say to me that I

13 need to go to the Legislature and resolve issues of

14 the state of candidacy with them, but the fact of

15 the matter is is that the Board is the governing

16 body that is given the power by the Constitution and

17 by the General Assembly to advise the General

18 Assembly and to function and run elections, I'm not

19 given that authority, so they are, you know,

20 tracking that backwards and trying to make it seem

21 like I somehow am in the wrong venue, when this

22 clearly is a venue of needing judicial intervention,

23 because even if I went to the Legislature, there is

24 no way that I would have guarantee that my ballot


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1 would have constitutionally eligible candidates on

2 it at the end of -- at the end of the ballot period

3 in November, so that would be another issue that we

4 would have to -- that needs to be considered by the

5 Court.

6 The -- in terms of the deficiencies, now

7 the Board has refused to identify any candidates

8 that were harmed by the so-called deficiency in my

9 petitions, and they refused to identify what that

10 harm was or what the prejudice was, and, in fact,

11 what part of my ballot or my objection they didn't

12 understand.

13 They say that it is too vague, but there

14 is really nothing else that I could have put in

15 place of that that would have held the power of the

16 question before us, which is, as I have already

17 argued, that the only thing that I could have done

18 would have been the reverse of, you know, asking for

19 some kind of evidence, and this is not about

20 evidence, it is about law.

21 The other problems that -- and I

22 understand that the Court, you know, in questions of

23 law has the ability to -- you know, that the

24 Illinois Board of Elections doesn't necessarily


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1 they are U.S. citizens or not, except by the candidate's

2 affirmation, that's unprovable in the public record.

3 The only person that has that information and can prove

4 it one way or the other is the candidate, so I lose my

5 freedom of the right to appeal and decide whether or not

6 these candidates belong on my ballot as far as that

7 goes. So that was one issue that really concerned me a

8 bit.

9 Now legally qualified in general we

10 believe that that means to be a U.S. citizen of one

11 designation or another, natural born or U.S. citizen

12 or naturalized, but if I were to find out later on

13 that some candidate was not when I was going through

14 that five day period I had to discern who I was

15 going to object to, the only information available

16 to me is what's in the public record or if I have

17 some time to go on the Internet and check the

18 Internet, as well as most of the candidates at the

19 time do not have websites up.

20 Now when you look at some of these

21 candidates, for instance, Gregg Moore, who is, you

22 know, obviously from a foreign land, and I say well,

23 how can I prove if he is legally qualified, and he's

24 not required to prove that in the current law, then


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1 when I go to ask him, when I had a phone

2 conversation with him, he was saying that I was

3 racially profiling him, and I wasn't, that's why I

4 specifically had to go after all thirty-two

5 candidates so that I wouldn't be accused of being

6 discriminatory, because it is the last thing that I

7 want to do, I just want to have a ballot that's

8 legally qualified, and Mr. Hartung was a different

9 example because he had a very unique first name, and

10 ethnically I didn't know if he was a man or a woman,

11 and there is nowhere in the papers where you can

12 either discern if they are male or female, let alone

13 if they are a U.S. citizen, so what the Board did is

14 they -- when I first went to the first meeting, I

15 could tell how they were going to handle it, they

16 kind of jumped everybody into one big basket and

17 then they separated from there into two groups of

18 people who responded to me and people who did not,

19 and the ones that responded to me, without any

20 motion from the candidates, they gave them a strike

21 and dismiss action, which I see no authority

22 whatsoever in any of the Board's decisions that I

23 reviewed where they can act as the counsel for the

24 candidates, and, you know, prepare a strike and


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1 dismiss motion, which, of course, I never saw, but

2 claim that they have now given them that authority,

3 even though the candidates, themselves, didn't ask

4 for that, so just based on that alone, that decision

5 needs to be reversed and sent back.

6 The problem that we face is that a number

7 of these candidates are removed from the Board by

8 other actions. Now if nobody else is going to the

9 sua sponte Rule 4 issue, I objected to a group of

10 candidates, and this is the group that nobody

11 responded, for whatever the reasoning was, so the

12 Board, not knowing what to do, they just had all of

13 a sudden out of thin air invoked this new rule

14 called Rule 4, which they assume an authority to

15 make motions based on their interpretation that

16 there is no way that the action will prevail.

17 Now there is no argument they have, no

18 authority that I can find in the law to support

19 that, and certainly there was none in the briefs, so

20 when you look at that you are saying well, what's

21 essentially happening here is that they are

22 complaining that my petition was somehow deficient,

23 and then they are covering for the candidate's

24 deficiencies and for lack of responsiveness by


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1 either writing their motions for them, sua sponte

2 presenting them or by invoking a Rule 4 and stating

3 that well, we made the decision, even though by law

4 none of these people have objected, and the rules

5 are generally if they don't object, they are removed

6 from the process or the case can be decided without

7 them, so that's what I think that should have

8 happened. So I really have a big problem with that,

9 and I can't see any quotations in the law that allow

10 for it.

11 There is a lot of things that I really

12 am -- still I don't really understand. I have to

13 get a dictionary and look up everything as I go, so

14 some of these terms, if I am a little awkward in

15 them, I apologize, and I have one little page of

16 corrections on some of my notations because I didn't

17 really exactly know how to make all the notations,

18 and I will present that to you.

19 Also there was a section in the record, I

20 had asked for the full record and was understanding

21 from the 10. -- 10.1 that I was entitled to the full

22 record, and I was presented with part of it and

23 didn't really realize or I would have mentioned it

24 to you yesterday, but I didn't see that a whole


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1 bunch of the candidates --

2 THE COURT: Pardon me, what was yesterday?

3 MS. MERONI: I was coming to understand some of the

4 details still, I was still studying yesterday.

5 THE COURT: I thought you said you had a

6 conversation with someone?

7 MS. MERONI: Oh, no, I meant when, excuse me,

8 Jessica, Ms. Reeves and I communicated in e-mail, she

9 asked me if I had received the stuff.

10 THE COURT: I see.

11 MS. MERONI: And I had communicated that I hadn't

12 noticed that these individual papers hadn't been filed.

13 May I give them to you now?

14 THE COURT: You have seen copies of them?

15 MS. REEVES: No, I don't know what she is referring

16 to.

17 THE COURT: What are you referring to?

18 MS. MERONI: These are all the Motions to Strike

19 that are all part of the record, but they are not part

20 of the court record that she submitted. These are all

21 from the candidates.

22 THE COURT: Show them to Ms. Reeves first.

23 MS. REEVES: Well, Your Honor, just looking at

24 these, none of them are signed and none of them were in


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1 the possession of the Board, so I'm not sure --

2 MS. MERONI: Yes, they are. They came through the

3 Board's e-mail. These are all part of the Board, they

4 came to me through e-mail.

5 THE COURT: For what purpose are you introducing

6 them?

7 MS. MERONI: Well, because the issue of Motion to

8 Strike, these are the candidate's responses to me on

9 their Motion to Strike and Dismiss, so I just thought

10 that since the Motion to Strike and Dismiss is an issue,

11 that we should have them as part of the record.

12 MS. REEVES: Your Honor, I would have to object, I

13 really don't know -- I'm not questioning your truth

14 here, I don't know for a fact that these came from the

15 Board. Some of them aren't signed, they don't appear to

16 be dated, and so I can't agree it is a part of the

17 record.

18 THE COURT: Very well.

19 Ms. Meroni, you may approach, I will take

20 a look at the documents. As to how the Court will

21 deal with those documents, I am unsure. You

22 proffered that they were disclosed to you as part of

23 the discovery process for the State.

24 MS. MERONI: Yes, they came to me from e-mail.


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1 THE COURT: All right.

2 MS. MERONI: And I -- I have that e-mail as proof,

3 that's probably why they are not signed.

4 MS. REEVES: It is possible, Your Honor, that those

5 may have been e-mailed to her directly from another

6 party in this case, in which case the Board didn't see

7 them or consider them, so we can't vouch for them.

8 THE COURT: I see. Very well.

9 All right, you may continue.

10 MS. MERONI: Part of the requirement is that the

11 full record should be presented, so perhaps then the

12 Board would be responsible for going back and presenting

13 the rest of the record, and that would clear up this

14 confusion, because I know for a fact that these actually

15 did go through Mr. Wenzel and that he received them.

16 THE COURT: So what, specifically, are you asking

17 the Board to do?

18 MS. MERONI: If the full record isn't here and we

19 need that full record, I am asking them to check and see

20 why the full record wasn't given, because as I

21 understand it, it is not just for the defense to pick

22 and choose what part of the record they want to display,

23 they are supposed to present the full record.

24 THE COURT: Okay, I asked at the beginning of the


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1 hearing whether or not discovery has been completed. It

2 seemed to me that it had.

3 Ms. Reeves?

4 MS. REEVES: To be perfectly honest, I don't know

5 that those change our arguments or her arguments, so --

6 THE COURT: I don't either.

7 MS. REEVES: If my not objecting is fine, we can do

8 that. I don't think it is going to help or hurt, so I

9 can withdraw my objection, and they can be part of the

10 record.

11 I would like there to be some sort of

12 notation that that came from her and not from us.

13 THE COURT: I'm going to admit it over the

14 objection, your stated position. I will allow

15 Ms. Meroni to present her full argument. I understand

16 she is pro se remembering that you are held to the

17 standard of an attorney, and I want to give you every

18 opportunity to present your case.

19 That being said, with regard to the

20 objections to discovery not all being disclosed, you

21 are going to need to proffer to the Court what it is

22 that was not disclosed, because this is sort of a

23 blanket statement, after having told the Court at

24 the beginning of this hearing that the discovery


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1 process was expedited and completed, so I am a

2 little bit at a loss now as to where you are going

3 with the discovery discrepancies.

4 MS. MERONI: I see. I didn't understand fully what

5 discovery meant when that was asked to me.

6 I do have some question about the

7 documents, they are not the full documents and

8 record of the proceedings, they are missing certain

9 aspects, and I have presented some of those.

10 THE COURT: Okay, well the time for that is

11 probably prior to the hearing, and that's why I started

12 this hearing with the question as to whether or not the

13 parties were essentially satisfied as to whether or not

14 the expedited discovery was completed.

15 Today, now, is the time for you to argue

16 your position and for the Court to render a ruling.

17 I have reviewed everything you have put in front of

18 me, and I am here to hear argument. I am a little

19 bit at a loss to now at the middle of your argument

20 take up discovery issues.

21 MS. MERONI: With the Court's permission, I will

22 put that aside, all the candidate's responses for Strike

23 and Dismiss were considered.

24 THE COURT: That's for you to decide. If you think


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1 you have adequately covered that ground, that's fine.

2 If we need to stop here and take up discovery issues,

3 that's fine as well. It may delay things.

4 MS. MERONI: Yes.

5 THE COURT: That's for you to decide. I'm not

6 trying to put any undue pressure on you. I want to make

7 sure that I afford both sides a fair hearing and that we

8 adequately resolve any outstanding discovery issues.

9 MS. MERONI: Okay, thank you.

10 THE COURT: You may continue.

11 MS. MERONI: So part of the right afforded to

12 citizens is a five day period, and essentially that's

13 all we get, doesn't matter how you try to play with the

14 game, they give you five days. If you are a minute

15 late, then your objection doesn't count, and the law

16 doesn't specifically lay out what has to be objected to,

17 except it has to relate to the sufficiency of the

18 nominating papers, and if the papers don't affirm one

19 way or the other the citizenship status and the age of

20 the individual that is seeking position on my ballot,

21 and the U.S. and Illinois Constitution as points of law

22 provide that assurance, then I can see no precedence

23 whatsoever for the Board to ignore that, and in fact, in

24 their permission they had the ability to go ahead and do


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1 different things rather than inventing Strike and

2 Dismiss Motions for some candidates and doing them sua

3 sponte. They could have subpoenaed -- they could have

4 brought together the different parties and asked us, you

5 know, if we could work something out.

6 I did work out things with a variety of

7 different candidates, and last night we did get an

8 agreement with the Libertarian Party that I have

9 here someplace, and so that agreement allows the

10 Court to discern whether or not he needs to see the

11 birth certificates of the party.

12 THE COURT: The Board or the Court?

13 MS. MERONI: The Court, I beg your pardon, in

14 chambers.

15 Just give me a second, I just had them.

16 See I try so hard not to be confused by this.

17 THE COURT: Just because the Board has the power to

18 do certain follow-up research such as subpoena

19 documents, things of that nature, doesn't seem to the

20 Court to be the issue. The issue here is whether or not

21 the board acted properly, appropriately in taking the

22 actions that it took, not to say that it didn't have

23 other options available, it is whether or not the

24 options that it did take were appropriate and legal, so


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1 I just don't want to get too far afield, because they

2 could have done these things that would have been

3 potentially to your benefit and that they didn't do

4 them, doesn't seem to me to be the issue.

5 MS. MERONI: Okay.

6 THE COURT: I get where it helps your position, I

7 just don't want to get too far afield. It is whether or

8 not the action it did take is a legal and appropriate

9 action.

10 MS. MERONI: I think when you are dealing with a

11 question of law, it becomes so difficult because there

12 really are no facts in the situation that you can

13 dispute, and except for the reality that I am afforded a

14 right, and their seems to be no -- a law seems to be

15 clearly unconstitutional, because it allows one player

16 in the party in the contest to have power that I don't

17 have, and we are all supposed to be essentially fair and

18 equal is the rule. They have that power, they know for

19 sure if they are constitutionally eligible, and I don't.

20 THE COURT: You have a right to object, you have a

21 right to a hearing. What I am sort of waiting for you

22 to argue, because I sense and discern this from

23 everything that I have read, that there was some

24 deficiency with the Statement of Candidacy or some


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1 obstacle from you reviewing that Statement of Candidacy.

2 It seems like therein lies the issue where you seem to

3 be arguing you are not getting enough information to

4 evaluate whether or not you have candidates with the

5 appropriate credentials.

6 MS. MERONI: Correct, and so the Statement of

7 Candidacy is particularly unconstitutional, because it

8 doesn't provide anyplace in the law to define legally

9 qualified, number one, and number two, it doesn't

10 provide any requirement for the candidates to prove

11 their affirmation, so part of the question then goes to

12 when I go into an objection period, the burden is

13 initially on me, but if the candidate is the only one

14 with the information, then I would argue with the Court

15 that the burden must switch to them, because I have no

16 access to that.

17 THE COURT: Okay.

18 MS. MERONI: And so, oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

19 THE COURT: Take your time.

20 MS. MERONI: So the Statement of Candidacy is --

21 violates legal protection and First Amendment rights

22 because, number one, it doesn't define legally

23 qualified, and number two, it doesn't afford for any

24 posting of public proof.


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1 Now I don't know if the sufficiency of

2 my -- the problem with the sua sponte has been

3 determined, but I looked at the Delay decision, and

4 when you look at that decision, it is actually

5 pretty interesting because what they -- what happens

6 in there is they are trying to toss out the

7 candidates, or no, in the Druck decision they are

8 asked to toss out the candidates because the

9 petitions weren't sufficient and there weren't

10 sufficient signatures, and so he goes on in the

11 Druck case to argue that the Statement of Candidacy

12 and the rules of that state -- sets forth signatures

13 are obsolete because it is randomly enforced,

14 Statement of Candidacy Evaluations apply. The

15 Board, and I would agree with that, it is randomly

16 enforced, but the judge ruled very succinctly that

17 the State is required to, both by statute and by

18 prior judicial decision, to enforce apparent

19 conformity standards, and so they don't do that, and

20 then Druck goes on, and I find that -- oh, shoot, I

21 find that decision to be so interesting because they

22 require the Board check before the papers get put

23 out for the candidates, for those people like us to

24 go ahead and protest, and the Board absolutely


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1 refuses to do that.

2 Okay. Okay, one more quick review of

3 this. I had a bit of a struggle with devising

4 remedies because I know that if I give you the wrong

5 remedy, then I end up not getting what I need, and I

6 know if I ask for something that you can't do, that

7 that creates a problem, and so when I am dealing

8 with the question of law, and this was even at the

9 Board level, and I was making my -- making my four

10 point questionnaire, I knew that I had to make an

11 affirmative statement about what is insufficient

12 about the nominating papers, that is, they don't

13 demonstrate the age or citizenship. I couldn't

14 affirm anything further because the Board would

15 ask -- you can't ask for that because it is not in

16 the statute. I affirmed that there is no way that

17 anybody can say I don't have the right to object to

18 candidates, so then I look back and say what else

19 could I have said, and it just, it is so crazy that

20 the Board would go through this process and say that

21 your statement isolated alone is not considered as a

22 whole petition is insufficient and then take other

23 people who shouldn't have been on the ballot

24 position anyways, and basically write their story


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1 for them or, you know, give them their -- their very

2 motion, and I couldn't find anyplace they justified

3 their right to do that, and so I think that that

4 would be the crux of my argument, except that I --

5 you know, Your Honor, I have been through this for a

6 whole year, and all I really want to know is if the

7 government that we have is constitutionally

8 eligible, and people will say to me things like

9 where in the Constitution does it say that the Board

10 has to be the one to decide, and I was very careful

11 to not state that the candidates should prove it to

12 the Board, because I don't know how it should become

13 part of public record.

14 I am sensitive to the different candidates

15 that I spoke to and talked to about how they felt

16 about this, and most of them were so proud to be

17 American, they were just busting, that's what they

18 want to say, "I am an American, I'm all about it,"

19 then they say what about privacy issues, so I felt

20 sympathetic to that, and when I was working with the

21 Libertarian Party, one of their people said to me,

22 "I don't want to give you my birth certificate,

23 would you accept my passport," and I thought it out,

24 I said in order to get a passport, you have to prove


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1 you are a U.S. citizen or have naturalization

2 papers, so that seems to be something the federal

3 government would ultimately, it is not for me to

4 make that decision, the place that I have to stand

5 my ground on is where the place is I am afforded the

6 right, that is the right to object because I did on

7 if they are legally qualified, and that is where I

8 have to stand, because if I go anywhere else, I get

9 blocked out by asking for powers that they don't

10 have, but, in fact, the Board does have the power,

11 and when I went through that T.R.O. and that

12 gentleman stood there next to me saying, "You should

13 go through the Board's procedure," so when I did

14 that, then what does the Board do, it tries to knock

15 me out again for procedure, and their procedures

16 that they define and that they do action on and that

17 they determine, even before I had a chance to make

18 the argument, so -- and then the other issue that

19 goes to this is the basic reality is the issue of

20 mootness and whether or not if the candidates, the

21 sixteen or so that would have been struck anyways

22 matter, they do because I am coming back. If I

23 lose, nothing is going to stop me. I want to know

24 if my ballot is legal, and so if I have to change my


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1 words a little bit this way or that way to make it

2 so now somebody will actually hear the merits of it,

3 that's what I have to do. It would be a great

4 tragedy, but this issue will recur. It recurs

5 because there is an insufficiency in the law, not

6 because I am guilty of frivolous action, in fact

7 this has consumed so much of my life that I can't

8 even imagine it. What it has taken to do this is

9 far from frivolous. I consider it to be a

10 responsibility, and that's why I always put on my

11 quotes, you know, about how important our

12 Constitution and our document is, and I don't want

13 to speak too long, so --

14 THE COURT: Okay, thank you, Ms. Meroni.

15 Ms. Reese?

16 MS. REEVES: Thank you, Judge.

17 I'm not going to repeat everything we have

18 said in our brief, I am just going to hit some of

19 the main points.

20 The first and biggest one is that the

21 issue before this Court is fairly narrow, it is

22 whether the Board of Elections erred in dismissing

23 Plaintiff's objection to the nominating papers of

24 the candidates, that's all.


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1 The twenty-three objections at issue in

2 this case say the candidates' nomination papers are

3 insufficient because they fail to demonstrate and/or

4 provide documentation that the candidate meets the

5 constitutional requirements of office, and just to

6 respond to something the Plaintiff said, I have

7 reviewed the entire petition, I am picking out the

8 paragraphs that seem to have some substance to them.

9 These objections are not specific to any candidate,

10 they don't say what's missing.

11 There -- she asked earlier how can she be

12 more specific, well a more specific objection would

13 be the candidate didn't have enough signatures or I

14 know that the candidate lives in Ohio, and those

15 would be the specific type that would need to be

16 there in order to kick somebody off the ballot.

17 Later in the proceedings at the Board

18 level she argued that she believes that the Board

19 needs to require proof of citizenship in order to be

20 on the ballot.

21 Illinois state law doesn't require that,

22 the Election Code doesn't require that, the General

23 Assembly in reading the Constitution and passing

24 laws under it decided that instead they would


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1 and in terms of the apparent conformity issue, the

2 way I understand it, apparent conformity required an

3 election authority to make sure that nominating

4 papers apparently conform to what's required,

5 meaning there is a Statement of Candidacy, there are

6 signatures. At that point the election authority

7 has to or cannot remove that name from the ballot

8 unless there is a valid objection filed, so apparent

9 conformity actually means they have to go on the

10 ballot unless there is an objection or clearly

11 something deficient like they didn't get the number

12 of signatures or something, so I don't think that

13 that concept in any way supports her argument, and

14 it is in the statute, it is at the Election Code,

15 Section 5/10-8, but in conclusion, the Board of

16 Elections here did exactly what it was supposed to

17 do. If it acted in the way Ms. Meroni wanted it to

18 act, it would be exceeding its authority, and that

19 would be illegal, not the procedure that they did.

20 Thank you.

21 THE COURT: Ms. Meroni, one final word from you.

22 MS. MERONI: Yes, well, the Board actually has

23 broad powers, and they do include to hold hearings, and

24 so they had other options than to just do a straight


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1 denial of due process for me, and that did not

2 necessarily mean that they would have to demand that

3 people gave a copy of their birth certificate. I said

4 that they could make a recommendation, in which case

5 that could have addressed the issue that I had, and I am

6 being penalized because they haven't done their job and

7 assured that they have -- we have a process that permits

8 us to assess whether or not candidates fulfill the

9 Statement of Candidacy and signatures, which is what my

10 right allows.

11 Also the sua sponte does not -- there is

12 plenty of case law that says the Board cannot make

13 action on its own motion, and that when they do make

14 action, it has to be narrowly defined so it doesn't

15 inhibit my rights as well, and the effect of their

16 rule was let's just say such as in 2008 when Alan

17 Keyes ran for office and he was placed on the ballot

18 without any signatures and nobody questioned him, so

19 he actually got on the ballot without apparent

20 conformity.

21 Now if these other individuals that -- the

22 sixteen that they did not take from the ballot

23 because they did not comply with apparent

24 conformity, some of them had no significance


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1 whatsoever or just one page, obviously that's not

2 25,000 on the face of any petition, and if they --

3 if they had that standard and they didn't listen to

4 it and they had turned mine down sua sponte, then

5 even though I was saying that the papers were not

6 legally qualified, it would have allowed them to

7 stay on the ballot, and that's a problem because I

8 had a valid complaint about them, and they -- you

9 know, it is a combination between them refusing to

10 do their job, I just don't understand why they

11 continue.

12 The other point that I wanted to make is

13 that it is a due process issue that they don't post

14 what apparent conformity standards are. If there is

15 three legs in this game, the administrators, the

16 voters, the candidates, all three of us should be

17 entitled to the same public information, that

18 includes if the Board is making decisions about what

19 parts of apparent conformity they are going to

20 listen to and what they aren't, it should be posted

21 in the public record, because when I go to do my

22 part of the game, I am -- I have got deficient

23 information, and so beyond that, the case law and

24 facts, there are no facts, and as I read the de


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1 nova, if there is no facts, the Board -- the defense

2 agrees that there are no facts from the beginning,

3 there is none in dispute and there never have been

4 any in dispute. In order to be mixed law and

5 review, there can be no question of statute, and

6 that's what this question is all about is whether or

7 not the statute is unconstitutional.

8 Thank you, sir.

9 THE COURT: Thank you, Ms. Meroni.

10 MS. MERONI: Thank you, sir, Your Honor.

11 THE COURT: Let me just speak for a moment to the

12 Motions to Strike and Dismiss that were presented. It

13 would seem like these are the type of documents that

14 would be in the record. I don't know if they are in the

15 record or not, I don't believe in my own estimation,

16 although I haven't had time to review these, I'm not

17 sure how they would advance your argument. I am not

18 considering them in making my ruling here today. I

19 wanted to make a record of the Court's position with

20 regard to those.

21 I do believe that what Ms. Reeves argues

22 is correct, and that is the Board did what it was

23 supposed to do. If it were to take action proposed

24 by Ms. Meroni, it would be exceeding its authority,


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1 I do find the Plaintiff's objections are

2 vague in the sense that you have a very long

3 petition, I would, for lack of a better phrase or

4 term, call it sort of a moving target as to just

5 what exactly your objections are. I think in hearing

6 your argument over a couple of hearings and having

7 reviewed all the terms, I have got a pretty good

8 sense it has to do with the Statement of Candidacy

9 and where the burden should lie with regard to what

10 information should be provided to the voter. I do

11 find your objections are vague in the sense that

12 they are sort of a moving target and that you failed

13 to state fully the nature of the objections as

14 required, so with that, the Board's decision will be

15 affirmed. I would ask that the prevailing party

16 prepare an order.

17 Ms. Reeves, can you do that for me?

18 MS. REEVES: I have one right now, Your Honor.

19 THE COURT: Can I review it, please?

20 MS. REEVES: Yes.

21 THE COURT: Is there anything I can do to clarify,

22 without reinitiating the argument, to clarify my ruling?

23 MS. MERONI: Yes, did you rule on the Strike and

24 Dismiss sua sponte. I didn't hear that as part of your


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1 decision.

2 THE COURT: Pardon me?

3 MS. MERONI: Is the sua sponte, the Rule 4, I

4 didn't hear whether or not you felt that --

5 THE COURT: My decision is that I have been offered

6 no argument or authority that proves or shows to this

7 Court that the agency exercised its power in an

8 arbitrary and capricious manner, in that this was not

9 inappropriate rule or action that the Board took, so

10 therefore I found in favor of the Board.

11 MS. MERONI: Thank you.

12 THE COURT: All right, I have signed the State's

13 Order.

14 Thank you.

15 MS. REEVES: Judge, actually I have two more

16 copies.

17 THE COURT: Very well. Is this the original?

18 Thank you. All right, that will be all.

19 Well argued, both of you. Thank you.

20 (Hearing adjourned)

21

22

23

24


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1 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR THE SEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT

2 SANGAMON COUNTY, ILLINOIS

3

4

5

6 I, Laura K. Berry, an Official Court Reporter

7 for the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Seventh

8 Judicial Circuit of Illinois, do hereby certify that I

9 reported in shorthand the proceedings had on the hearing

10 in the above-entitled cause; that I thereafter caused

11 the foregoing to be transcribed into typewriting, which

12 I hereby certify to be a true and accurate transcript of

13 the proceedings held before the HONORABLE PATRICK W.

14 KELLEY, Judge of said Court.

15

16

17

18

19

20 Laura K. Berry

Official Court Reporter

21 License #084-001931

22

23 Dated this 7th day

24 of October, 2010.

meroni v il sboe 7th judicial district sangamon county (administrative review) transcript - sept 23...

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