By AL MANNING A political columnist for The State Journal-Register, he is a native of Springfield and was graduated with a B.S. in journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He has written about politics and government in the capital city for the past seven years. Creation of statewide authority hits snag after snag after snag

State Board of Elections

Because the court found the board's members to be appointed in an unconstitutional manner, the State Board of Elections will have no members on March 15 unless the General Assembly passes a law establishing a new appointment method

FOR SIX YEARS the state's political leaders have wrestled with the idea of creating a statewide authority to administer elections. The attempt to establish a State Board of Elections has thus far been unsuccessful.

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated the proposal, and recommended a State Board of Elections be established. The Constitution was ratified by the voters in 1970. In 1973, the General Assembly implemented the Constitution by passing a law creating a board. Gov. Dan Walker vetoed the legislation, but the veto was overridden. The governor filed a lawsuit in 1975 challenging the constitutionality of the board, and in 1976 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the legislature's method of appointing members was unconstitutional.

The first proposal for a central election authority was made by the late Peter Tomei, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and chairman of its Committee on Suffrage and Constitution Amending. He suggested one person be designated as the state election official for the entire state. Another delegate, the late Betty Ann Keegan of Rockford, then proposed a larger board to be responsible for the general supervision of election laws. Keegan's proposal was approved by the delegates and ratified by the voters.*

The purpose of the Board of Elections is to provide a central authority to establish and enforce uniform election practices.

Prior to the constitutional mandate, a committee of state officials was charged with overseeing the state elections. A State Certifying Board, consisting of the secretary of state, attorney general and auditor of public accounts was responsible for state elections until the 1940's when a State Electoral Board was established. The governor and the treasurer joined the other three elected state officials, and the governor was designated as the chairman of the State Electoral Board. In the 1960's, the chairmen of the state central committees of the Republican and Democratic parties were added to the State Electoral Board.

Under these operations, the day-to-day responsibility for administering elections fell to the Index Division of the Secretary of State's Office and to the local election officials. However, Con Con delegates thought Illinois should have one central authority. Twenty-nine other states have such an authority, and five of those are mandated by state constitutions. In Ohio, for example, the secretary of state appoints the election authority. In California, the appointments are made by the governor, attorney general, secretary of state and comptroller.

Finally, the delegates agreed upon the following language for the Illinois Board of Elections:

The provision was adopted over the objections of the Chicago Democrats. As cited in Ballots for Change, Paul Elward, a spokesman for the group, correctly predicted that the even membership requirement "will cause a great deal of mischief."

The General Assembly debated various plans for implementing the Constitution before agreeing on a plan in 1973. Under the arrangement, the four legislative leaders would each nominate two persons for the board and the governor would appoint one nominee from each pair. The statute states:

Since a tie vote is possible with a board consisting of four members, the legislature determined that a tie would

*Alan S. Gratch and Virginia H. Ubik Ballots for Change: New Suffrage and Amending Articles for Illinois (Urbana: published for the Institute of Government and Public Affairs by the University of Illinois Press. 1973).

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be broken by means of a lottery. The statute provides:

Despite the apparent compromise worked out by the political parties in drafting the legislation, Gov. Walker vetoed the measure (S.B. 1198). In his veto message, the governor said a fifth member of the board — a political independent — should be appointed. He also questioned the constitutionality of the tie-breaking procedure.

"In appointing the membership of such a Board, the governor should not be limited to a restricted list of individuals," Walker said. "Rather, he should have broad discretion to seek out individuals having unswerving dedication to the election process. Moreover, the Board must consist of an uneven number of people, with a political Independent as the potential tie-breaker so that no party can create deadlocks which would frustrate the purpose of the Board ....

"Since the Board would have an even number of persons from each party — persons certain to be highly partisan — deadlocks could be expected if there were strong efforts to change local practices considered to be unfair or discriminatory. Under the bill, such deadlocks would be resolved by disqualifying one member through picking lots. Thus strong enforcement would be left strictly to chance. The most likely result would be political compromise preserving the status quo."

The legislature completely rejected the governor's reasoning. Delegate Keegan, who later became a member of the state Senate, urged the veto be overridden because the framers of the Constitution had never even considered that a political independent be appointed to serve on the Board. On October 16, 1973, the Senate voted 54-1 to override the veto. Six days later the House voted 158-4 to override and the measure became law.

The legislative leaders had to move fast to nominate their candidates because the new board was charged with administering the next election which technically began in six weeks with the filing of nominating petitions. Of the eight nominees, the governor picked the following: Don Adams of Springfield, chairman of the Republican State Central Committee; Frank Lunding of Chicago, former director of "Operation Eagle-Eye," the GOP election-watching organization; Michael Lavelle of Chicago, a loyalist of the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was involved in conducting elections in Cook County; and William Harris of Marion, chairman of the Williamson County Democratic Central Committee. Harris resigned January 12 upon appointment to the House to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former Rep. Clyde L. Choate (D., Anna).

The legislative leaders and the governor were immediately criticized for nominating and appointing four persons with such partisan political backgrounds. The board itself came under intense criticism. For example: the board hired approximately 100 staff persons for the agency, and most of them were hired with political sponsorship at salaries considerably higher than found elsewhere in government. Next, the board knocked 500 candidates for local office off the ballot for not filing a required Statement of Economic Interest (the decision was overturned in Scott v. Lavelle). The clincher came when the board ruled Mayor Daley's political organization did not meet the definition of a political committee and thus did not have to comply with the state's Campaign Disclosure Act.

Finally, legal action was taken against the board. On July 7, 1975, Gov. Walker filed suit alleging the method of selecting members of the board and the method of breaking tie votes were unconstitutional. The governor's motives for taking action were questioned because the suit was entered after the Better Government Association filed a charge with the board that the All - Illinois Democratic Committee (one of Walker's political committees) did not comply with the state's Campaign Disclosure Act. The suit was filed to stop an investigation into the committee's finances. However, Walker pointed out that he had questioned the constitutionality of the board in his veto message, and he said it simply took time to get the suit filed.

The governor won the case. In November 1976, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in Walker v. State Board of Elections that the method of appointing members was unconstitutional because it violated the principle of separation of powers. In ruling that the legislature cannot appoint members to the executive branch, the court cited Article V, section 9(a) of the Constitution:

In the opinion written by Justice Carswell Crebs, the court stated: "The focus of the floor debates at the 1970 Constitutional Convention, insofar as they pertain to Article III, section 5, concerned the need for a central election authority and the relative merits of including reference to such an authority in the Constitution. Little thought appears to have been given to the particular manner in which Board members might be chosen." The court also ruled that the lottery scheme used to break tie votes of the board was unconstitutional because policy would be decided arbitrarily. Thus, six years of work in implementing the Board of Elections provision of the 1970 Constitution would have to be begun anew. The court noted the need to allow sufficient opportunity for legislative response, and the judgment does not become effective until March 15, 1977.

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