Disturbing trend or mere coincidence at Monday's Elections Board meeting?

I suppose that the traditional approach to reporting Monday's meeting of the Cook County Officers Electoral Board would highlight the resolution of the second of two objections to 6th Subcircuit candidate Lori Ann Roper's candidacy, leaving Associate Judge Charles "Charlie" Beach unopposed for the Democratic nomination for the Araujo vacancy and, since no Republican has filed in this race, virtually assured of election in November.

But Roper withdrew her candidacy on April 13; the first of the objections made to her petitions was resolved on this basis by Board action on April 14. Monday's resolution of the remaining objection was mere housekeeping.

Another approach might be to 'accentuate the positive' and note that, with the exception of Roper, who jumped before she was pushed, all of Monday's Electoral Board decisions resolved objections in favor of judicial hopefuls -- this at least would be consistent with the Panglossian tone that this site has sometimes purposely taken.

But a pattern seemed to emerge in the judicial cases disposed of by the Electoral Board: This candidate was found to have 758 signatures over the minimum; that one had 496 more than necessary; another was 489 over. All anyone needs is the minimum.

Some sloppiness was brought to light: In one case a sheet from someone else's petition made it into the candidate's petitions. One sheet. In another, a sheet listed a different vacancy than the one for which the candidate actually filed. Also, one sheet. (The candidate presumably circulated for two vacancies and got one page mixed up.) In neither case were the errors deemed fatal to the candidate; both were otherwise well over the minimum even when the erroneous sheets were discarded.

In some cases, the objections were withdrawn after the records examination confirmed that the candidate had at least a couple hundred signatures more than required. In one of these cases, the objection was withdrawn after the candidate was found to have 577 more valid signatures than the minimum. In these cases, the Electoral Board dismissed the objections as moot.

I do not mean to suggest or infer that it is any way wrong to bring a challenge against a candidate who files defective petitions. Some may not consider it "nice" -- and there are plenty of folks who consider the many obstacles to ballot access, including substantial signature requirements, to be unnecessarily onerous -- but signature requirements and challenges to signatures obtained are part of the process in place.

The rules may be hypertechnical, byzantine, and deliberately obtuse -- but lawyers, and in particular lawyers who aspire to be judges, should be sharp enough to find a good election lawyer to help them navigate the perilous provisions of the Election Code. And FWIW readers will certainly remember that a well-considered petition challenge happened to be critical to the rise of a certain South Side lawyer who wound up in the White House.

But I respectfully submit that challenges to petitions that easily survive records examinations with hundreds of signatures to spare -- even if withdrawn with some degree of graciousness thereafter -- are not well-considered. Or appropriate.

Although I am an outsider, I have some appreciation for the compressed time-frame in which decisions must be made about whether to challenge petitions or not. With more time for reflection, a candidate might decide against a particular challenge -- but with a short schedule a candidate has to make snap 'use it or lose it' decisions. But it occurs to me that there may be an increasing trend to challenge petitions just for the cussedness of it. Because it will divert time and resources from an opponent's campaign. The number of failed challenges may be a symptom the continuing coarsening of our judicial election process.

The judicial candidate cases decided Monday by the Electoral Board were mostly of a kind. The matters still working their way to the full Board may be more challenging. We will see. The Board is next scheduled to meet on Friday morning.