Mayor Harold Washington`s supporters filed challenges Monday to more than half the 196,000 signatures on petitions that seek to place on the Nov. 4 ballot a controversial referendum asking voters if they want to change the way the city elects its mayor.
The objections, which Washington supporters said were filed against 98,378 of the petitions` signatures, were part of a multipronged attack on the referendum effort–an issue that some say could result in the most bitter and prolonged politically inspired court battle in the city`s history.
The battle is over a proposed referendum asking voters if Chicago`s mayor and other citywide elected officials should be chosen through a nonpartisan election rather than the traditional two-party primary system. However, it has implications not only for the Nov. 4 general election. If not resolved by 1987, it could delay the February mayoral primary and possibly the April election.
The referendum needs 142,824 valid signatures to get on the November ballot. With the challenges filed by Washington`s allies with the city`s Board of Election Commissioners, fewer than 98,000 signatures are unchallenged. If the challenges are successful, the issue will not be on the ballot in November.
Ald. Timothy Evans (4th) the mayor`s city council floor leader who has led the opposition to the referendum, called the pro-referendum petition drive ”most massive instance of election fraud we`ve seen in this city.”
Washington has opposed the referendum because it could jeopardize his re- election chances by forcing him into a one-on-one race with a white opponent. Cook County State`s Atty. Richard M. Daley, regarded as a likely mayoral candidate if a nonpartisan election were held, accused Washington of engaging in ”gutter politics” over the issue and called on the mayor to explain why he is so eager to keep the referendum off the ballot.
”I ask Mayor Washington here and now to agree that if there are enough
(valid) signatures, he will support the right of the people to vote on this issue in November,” Daley said at a press conference in his Daley Center office.
Under the current system, the mayor could run as an independent against white Republican and Democratic candidates, who would split the white vote between them enabling Washington to win in scenario similar to his 1983 victory in the Democratic mayoral primary.
Washington and Evans have charged that the petitions are full of forged signatures, inaccurate addresses and other irregularities that render signatures invalid.
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The mayor`s allies contended that some petition sheets filed in support of the referendum had been collected earlier for different reasons. They said one sheet of signatures supported the renomination of George Dunne for president of the Cook County Board and another supported Aaron Jaffe for a judicial nomination.
They also said one woman was listed as the collector of 42 petition sheets that included not only duplicate signatures but some triplicates as well as apparent forgeries.
Recognizing that Daley could benefit from a nonpartisan election, the mayor has publicly tried to link him to irregularities on the petitions.
”If his name were Smith instead of Daley, they would have hauled him off to jail,” the mayor said Sunday.
”He called me a criminal,” Daley responded Monday. ”He has a lot of nerve.”
Daley`s supporters were quick to remind reporters that in the past Washington-backed candidates have been accused of having fraudulent nominating petitions.
Daley also objected to Washington`s charge that the referendum proposal is racially motivated.
”Mayor Washington has made it clear that no one can dare to disagree with him without being called a racist, a criminal and a public enemy,” Daley said. ”I believe the people of the city are sick and tired of these personal attacks.”
The challenges plus a copy of each petition sheet containing a challenged signature were in a pair of three-foot high stacks of paper wheeled into the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners` office Monday afternoon by Walter
”Slim” Coleman, an Uptown community activist and supporter of the mayor.
One part of the challenge is a request that the election board disallow 98,387 specific signatures for various reasons.
Evans said that the mayor`s supporters have not verified that every signature they challenged is improper. But, he said, the indications of wrongdoing are so pervasive that the election board staff has the duty to check each signature before deciding whether the referendum may be held.
This argument is a second key challenge to the petitions and is contained in a 14-page document filed with the election board detailing the legal arguments supporting the challenge.
The document refers to ”evidence of a pattern of fraud, false swearing and total disregard of the Illinois Election Code. Such a pattern requires that the electoral board examine the validity of each and every signature (by circulator or signer) contained on the petitions regardless of whether specific objection to such signatures have been made,” the document said.
Washington backers support this argument by referring to a 1984 state Appellate Court opinion in a race between a Washington-endorsed candidate and a regular Democratic candidate for 1st Ward Democratic committeeman. Regular Democrats were upheld when they challenged the signatures submitted on behalf of the Washington candidate, Patricia Dixon, but conceded that they didn`t examine all of the signatures for possible violations.
Thomas Johnson, attorney for the mayor`s Political Education Project
(PEP), said that volunteer workers did not have time during the last week to check each signature against the signatures on file, although the names they did check showed that 35 percent, more than one in three, were invalid.
By invalid he meant that the signature was so different from the one on file that it appeared to have been forged, that the signer`s address was wrong or that the signer is not a registered voter in Chicago or that the petition sheets were duplicates.
Officials of PEP allege irregularities on 4,349 petition sheets, more than half the sheets filed by Washington`s political opponents. PEP argued that those sheets were not properly notarized and that 197 were photocopies of other petition sheets. Each petition sheet contains space for 25 signatures.
The challenges were made on behalf of three Chicago residents: Rev. Jesse W. Cotton, pastor of the Greater Institutional African Methodist Episcopal Church 7800 S. Indiana Ave.; Betty Wilhoite, of 175 E. Delaware Pl., head of the League of Women Voters in Chicago; and Mary E. Zuninga, 2434 S. Hamlin Ave. The challenges were made on behalf of a black, a white and a Hispanic.
In addition to challenging the validity of the signatures with specific objections, Washington forces:
— Challenge the entire set of petitions arguing that the referendum is illegal under the home-rule provisions of the Illinois Constitution. Johnson said the Constitution prohibits any change in the method of electing officers for a home-rule unit like Chicago unless the proposed change is initiated by the city council.
— Contend the proposition may not appear on the Nov. 4 ballot because the city council has already certified three other public questions to appear on the ballot as nonbinding advisory referendums. Johnson said Illinois election law prohibits the submission of more than three public questions to the voters at the same election.
Johnson said that possible avenues to be explored in the courts should the election board uphold the validity of the petitions include:
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— Challenging the statute that gave objectors only five working days to examine the 196,000 signatures. Johnson said the objectors had asked the Board of Election Commissioners for 24-hour-a-day access to the petititons in preparing their objections but were granted access only from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. — Suing in U.S. District Court for an injunction barring the referendum based on alleged violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.