Three seats are up for election to the Hinsdale Elementary District 181 school board, and seven candidates are running. That may not be enough.
If petition challenges filed by two of the candidates against the other five are successful, the two challengers will undoubtedly win election on Nov. 4, and a write-in campaign apparently would decide the fate of the third seat.
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“Just do it right,” said Marie Bill, one of the candidates who filed the challenges. “We’re not questioning technicalities. This is just the basics.”
Bill, who ran fifth out of six candidates for three board seats in 1995, and Susan Becker, another candidate, contend the petitions of the five other candidates are flawed for myriad reasons.
A three-member panel of Peter Metz, District 181 board president; school Supt. David Hendrix; and William Oelman, senior District 181 board member, will rule on the objections at a Monday hearing.
District 181 is the second DuPage school district with a brouhaha about the petition process for board candidates. In Wheaton-Warrenville Unit District 200, two citizens have charged that petitions of four candidates do not meet legal requirements. The first of three hearings on that issue will be at 4 p.m. Thursday.
If the challengers are successful and the four candidates are disqualified, District 200 would be left with five candidates for five vacancies.
In the Hinsdale contest, Ronald Lorenzini, one of the five challenged candidates, has asked the district to remove his name from the ballot. The three-member panel will act on his request at the Monday meeting.
Bill and Becker charge that though Lorenzini has submitted a petition with 58 signatures, as legally required, one citizen signed seven times on different pages. The same citizen did not witness seven signatures as he claimed. Also, five signatures are of residents not registered to vote at addresses shown.
The petitions of Steven Lipstein, signed by 56 people, also have been challenged by Bill and Becker. One objection is the same as for Lorenzini–that one citizen did not witness seven signatures as he claimed. In addition, the challengers contend that six residents signed who are not registered voters at the addresses listed, and that two people each signed twice.
Deborah Tyrrell has 52 signatures on her petitions. Once again, Bill and Becker charge, one petition circulator did not witness nine signatures. Also, they maintain that five signed who are not registered to vote from the addresses given.
Lorenzini, Lipstein and Tyrrell are endorsed by the District 181 caucus, which interviews potential school board candidates and makes endorsements. Why the caucus, with years of experience in overseeing school board candidates’ petitions, was not more meticulous with the documents may be discussed at the Monday hearing.
Efforts to reach Karen Lutz, caucus co-chairman, for comment were unsuccessful.
A fourth candidate, Kevin Conner, submitted 15 petition sheets with 123 signatures, saying he is running for a school board seat “to be voted for at the non-partisan election to be held on the second day of November 1993.” Bill and Becker note that the election date is Nov. 4, 1997.
The two women also contend circulators of 12 of the petition sheets did not appear before the notary public who purported to notarize the circulators’ statements that they were present for the signatures.
Ann Mueller, an incumbent seeking re-election, submitted 81 signatures. Bill and Becker charged that she failed to include the required statement of candidacy sworn before a notary public. They said it was later notarized and therefore is void because an alteration was made after petitions were filed.