Amy Ohlsen, Boone County Clerk, said Joseph Severino will appear on the county’s March 17 Republican primary ballot while his appeal of a ballot disqualification moves through the courts, even though most other counties removed his name after the Illinois State Board of Elections declined to certify him.
“For us, it was all about timing,” Ohlsen told the Rockford Sun.
“Certifications were due for ballots on January 26, and the decision that he was getting objected to was on the 27th. We already had our ballots certified, so we chose to stick with our ballots to get them mailed out to vote-by-mail citizens, allowing them to return their ballots on time. With the new postmark dating requirements and standards by the USPS, we still have people who have not received their ballots that were mailed out on February 5th.”
Severino still has an appeal pending before a state appellate court and has indicated he may take the case to the Supreme Court of Illinois.
Ohlsen said voters were informed that his eligibility was under review.
“We put notices in our office to inform voters that an objection was still pending,” she said. “It was going to the appellate courts, and we were still waiting for a date and a decision. We let voters know, when they came in for early voting, that someone on the ballot might not remain on it. If they chose to vote for that person, their vote would not be counted. After consulting with the state’s attorney’s office, that is the process we followed. We will also post a notice that he is off the ballot based on an appellate court decision in the First District at every polling place and on March 17.”
In early January, the state board ruled that Severino and his running mate fell 252 signatures short of the 5,000 required for statewide candidates, submitting 4,748 valid signatures.
The board certified other Republican gubernatorial tickets on Jan. 27, including Ted Dabrowski and Carrie Mendoza; James Mendrick and Robert Renteria; Darren Bailey and Aaron B. Del Mar; and Rick Heidner and Christina Neitzke-Troike.
Initially, five of Illinois’ 102 counties kept Severino on their ballots while his appeal was pending. That number fell to four after Ogle County said it would reprint 21,000 ballots to remove his name. Severino now appears only in Kane, McHenry, Lake and Boone counties. In other counties, ballots list only certified candidates.
Ohlsen said smaller counties face logistical constraints.
“Some counties are bigger and have more resources to process this much faster than smaller counties,” she said. “We consulted with the state’s attorney’s office to ensure voters were informed about what was happening. That was the decision we came to, and we were confident in it. The decision came so late that we would have sent our mail-in ballots today or tomorrow.”
She said officials had to balance timely delivery of vote-by-mail ballots with pending legal decisions.
“We already knew it was going to be difficult to get their votes back to us on time with the new postmark requirements, so we just came to that decision, knowing we weren’t going to get the only county,” Ohlsen said.
The ballot dispute involving Severino unfolded alongside a separate case involving Tedora M. Brown, a Republican candidate in the 11th Congressional District.
Early voting in DuPage County was paused to update ballots and later resumed after the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court reinstated Brown following her earlier removal. By the time her name was restored, 742 in-person early votes had already been cast without her listed.
Boone, Lake, Kane and McHenry counties kept Brown on the ballot while her appeal was pending. Cook, Will and DeKalb counties removed Severino but not Brown.
Ohlsen said changes to deadlines could help avoid similar situations in the future.
“Having the deadlines changed to allow time for objections and appeals, and ensuring that any appeals are put on the docket immediately without a multi-week wait,” Ohlsen said. “We were waiting for court dates for this one, but we also had certified our ballots very early at the end of January. If the dates and deadlines could be adjusted, or if the appellate and circuit courts could hear these cases faster, that would really help.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski criticized the handling of ballots across counties.
“It’s not as simple as one error,” Dabrowski told Prairie State Wire. “We’ve got multiple ballots, three different ballots running around in Illinois, and that breaks all the requirements by the Constitution of uniformity of ballots. So you can imagine that there will be voters who will be disenfranchised and candidates who were disenfranchised, and that’s a big problem given the election integrity problems we have, not just nationwide but in Illinois in particular, and of course the level of corruption we have here in Illinois.”
Dabrowski’s comments came after he filed a lawsuit against Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, who misspelled Dabrowski’s name on the ballot. Ammons is an ex-con whose wife, longtime State Rep. Carol Ammons (D-Urbana), helped secure a pardon that made him eligible to seek the office.
Dabrowski criticized the inconsistencies.
“Severino is on the ballot in at least five counties, and so that has other major implications for what’s going on here,” he said.
