Illinois law requires potential candidates for all offices to circulate written nominating petitions on hard copy. Within established time frames, set numbers of “wet” signatures are to be solicited from registered voters living in a given jurisdiction.

The Democratic and Republican parties are deemed to be established in Illinois. Accordingly, they enjoy low petition signature thresholds.

New parties (examples: Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, Constitution) and independents have daunting signature requirements.

Here are the petition signature requirements for the 16th Congressional District, as calculated by the Illinois State Board of Elections:

To run as a Democrat: 560 signatures

To run as a Republican: 984 signatures

To run as a new party candidate: 15,129 signatures

To run as an independent: 15,129 to 24,205 signatures

To run as a write-in: no petition signatures required(1)

Scott Summers has long shunned the Democrats and Republicans. For twenty years, he has been a member of the Illinois Green Party.

Darin LaHood needed a minimum of 984 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot for the sixteenth district. As a matter of prudence, he probably gathered a few hundred more. No one challenged his petitions. No other Republicans ran against him.

Had Scott run as a Green, he would have needed at least 15,129 signatures. Practically speaking, new party candidates must double the minimums in order to survive inevitable challenges by Democrats and Republicans to knock them off ballots.

Do the math. Summers’ minimum of 15,129 signatures divided by Mr. LaHood’s minimum requirement of 984 equals 15.375.

That means that if he had attempted to get on the November ballot as a Green Party candidate, Summers would have needed to gather over fifteen times as many signatures as Representative LaHood.

At a minimum, fifteen times as many signatures. In order to defeat an inevitable petition challenge by Democrats, thirty times as many.

Perhaps you now can understand why it is exceedingly unusual for Illinois voters to be able to choose from more than two candidates in a given race.

Now.  Anyone for some statistics?

Ballotpedia.org tracks uncontested elections nationally.  As of June, 2024, they have identified 435 upcoming contests in Illinois.  

Their analysis?  374 of Illinois races are uncontested this year.  92 are contested.  

In other words, fourteen percent of all 2024 elections in Illinois have at least two candidates.    Eighty-six percent of them have no opposition.(2)

How pathetic (and, perhaps, how chilling) is that?

I have two rather sarcastic thoughts.

First:  so much for democracy, it seems.

Second:  how can ya possibly throw the bums out when there's only one bum on the ballot?

This shows once again how Illinois election laws are deliberately written to limit voter choice.

Now. The Democrats wouldn’t – or couldn’t – field a candidate to run against Representative LaHood. Effectively, they have surrendered the seat.

Mr. LaHood has endorsed Donald Trump for President. One would think that for this reason alone, the Democrats might have wanted to run token opposition. They didn’t even try.

Consider the irony: the Democratic Party is not participating in the democratic process.

Accordingly, Representative LaHood’s name will be the only one that will appear on November ballots in the 16th district.

One candidate. Just one candidate.

Scott passionately believes that voters deserve choices. When it became clear that Mr. LaHood would be unopposed, Summers resolved to run as a write-in.

Sources:

1. https://www.elections.il.gov/ElectionOperations/CandidatePortal.aspx , Page 25 of the "2024 Candidate Guide" pdf

2. https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_uncontested_elections,_2024