The signatures of two residents will not be counted and the objections of two other residents will be heard at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 27 as the local electoral board mulls whether an advisory question on the much discussed village-township merger proposal will be on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The River Forest electoral board Monday night ruled unanimously that the signatures of Tom and Amy Dwyer are not genuine and were therefore discounted from petitions. The signatures of the village trustee and his spouse showed up on signature pages in support of the non-binding measure. Dwyer has been vocally opposed to the merger concept.
The Dwyer signatures may still be among the objections filed last week by River Forest residents Pierangela Murphy and Patricia Marino. Their objections will be taken up at village hall in the meeting next week. It is open to the public.
Monday was the first time that the electoral board has been constituted to examine a petition or candidate challenge.
The electoral board – whose membership is mandated by state law – is composed of Village President Catherine Adduci, Trustee Susan Conti and Village Clerk Sharon Halperin. Adduci and Conti were supporters of HB 4425, which, if it had passed, would have allowed a binding referendum on the question of merger.
Dwyer denied that he had knowledge of the petition drive until a couple of days before the signature pages were filed Aug. 4 and that he was not a part of any strategy to derail the referendum, a resident-driven effort that began earlier this summer.
At one time, Dwyer had been in Adduci’s and Conti’s camp on HB4425, which Rep. Chris Welch, its chief sponsor, tabled in March. Then in April, Dwyer changed his position, saying he needed “more time to figure this all out,” he said at the time. He has been a vocal opponent of a village-township merger ever since.
Murphy and Marino filed a litany of objections to the 455 signatures gathered by the referendum’s backers earlier this summer and filed by supporters Aug. 4. The two contend there aren’t enough valid signatures to place the question on the ballot because a number of the signers were not registered voters or their signatures were not genuine.
Objections filed by Murphy and Marino also contend that some nomination papers contained numerous sheets circulated by individuals whose sheets “demonstrate a pattern of fraud and disregard of the election code to such a degree that every sheet circulated by that individual is invalid.”
Murphy and Marino also state that the signature sheets are not consecutively numbered and that the form of the referendum question itself is not in the proper form and is vague.
The advisory referendum – the first ever conducted in River Forest if it makes the ballot – will consider whether the township should be abolished with services merged into the village. For this action to take place, the non-binding measure must be approved by voters. Then Welch’s bill – or one like it – must be put back on the table and passed by both houses of the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Pat Quinn. If both those steps are successful, a binding initiative could be placed before the voters in April 2015.
