With polls showing many voters are dissatisfied with both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Democratic and Republican operatives acted Monday to try to remove third-party and independent presidential candidates from the Illinois’ Nov. 5 ballot.
Democratic-backed challenges were made to petitions filed by the presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, while Republicans filed challenges to Constitution Party candidate Randall Terry and a placeholder for the Libertarian Party.
Monday marked the end of the formal objection period to petitions from independent and third-party presidential candidates with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Reasons behind the objections to the candidacy papers, which could include questions over the required number of petition signatures from registered voters, will not be available until the election board assigns the cases to a state hearing examiner, which will likely happen at the board’s July 9 meeting.
Kennedy is the controversial heir to the storied political family, while Stein was the Green Party’s nominee in 2012 and 2016. Their petitions were challenged by two people, one being Zach Koutsky, the former legislative and political director for Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, State Board of Elections records show.
Koutsky, a managing director for Mercury LLC, a public strategies firm, also was a senior adviser and campaign manager for Democratic state Treasurer Michael Frerichs.
The candidacy papers of Terry of Tennessee, the Constitution Party presidential candidate, and a placeholder for Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver of Georgia were challenged by Jeff Fiedler of River Grove, State Board of Elections records showed. Fiedler has been a paid staffer for the Chicago Republican party.
If the challenges are successful, it would leave only Biden and Trump on Illinois’ general election presidential ballot.