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Resident challenges Evanston candidate’s petitions
Edward Tivador (right), a candidate for Evanston First Ward alderman, shakes hands with Scott Spears, the attorney for the First Ward resident Barbara Janes who filed a petition challenge against Tivador, after the election challenge was thrown out during the city's Municipal Officers Electoral Board meeting at the Civic Center in Evanston on Friday, Jan. 11, 2013. | Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: February 11, 2013 6:50AM
EVANSTON — An election challenge has been filed against a First Ward Aldermanic candidate in the April 9 election, alleging he failed to correctly identify the office he was running for on his petitions and that the documents contain other violations.
The city’s Municipal Officers Electoral Board is scheduled to hear the petition challenge filed by First Ward resident Barbara Janes at 11 a.m. Friday in the aldermanic library at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, 2100 N. Ridge Ave.
In her objection, Janes, a longtime supporter of incumbent First Ward Alderman Judy Fiske, charged that candidate Edward Tivador’s petition sheets are legally void and is asking that his name be removed from the ballot.
Each of the candidate’s 11 sheets call for the candidate to be nominated for the office of “Alderman,” charged Janes, “which is an entirely different office than that for which the objector assumes that these nominations have been filed.
“If the candidate was, in fact, seeking nomination for the office of the First Ward Alderman, candidate should have specified that he was seeking nomination for the office of First Ward Alderman,” maintained Janes.
The sheets do contain the name of the ward in the top preamble, addressed to the voters in “First Ward of Evanston.”
As precedent she cited the 2005 election when then candidate Ryan Garton was removed from the ballot for failing to specify on his ballot that he was running for Fourth Ward Alderman.
That same year Alderman Lionel Jean-Baptiste was also removed from the ballot for specifying the office he was running for as the “2nd Ward” rather than listing it as “2nd Ward Alderman.”
In her objection, Janes said Tivador’s petition sheets also included other errors, where circulators of the petitions also signed sheets in support, in apparent violation of the statutes.
Janes named as one of the circulators, Cheryl Wollin, who lost to Fiske in a hotly fought race in the 2005 election.
Altogether, if the objections were upheld, Tivador’s number of signatures would fall 18 below the minimum of 85 signatures needed, charged Janes.
She is asking that the Election Board as insufficient and not in compliance with election statute declare the candidate’s nomination papers, and that his name be stricken from the ballot.
Tivador, superintendent of Northbrook/Glenview School District 30, was unavailable for comment in calls to his office and home on Monday. Wollin also could not be reached.
If the electoral board upholds the objection, that would leave only one contested city council race, in the Sixth Ward, in the April 9th election.
