Voter Registration Information and Thoughts on the Feb. 2 Primary
December 18, 2009
ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE? Primary elections are coming up on Tuesday, February 4th. If you are not registered to vote, you’ll need to get registered. The following summary of how to do it was recently published by the folks at Mill Creek Elementary.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010, is the last day for off-site voter registration for the February 2, 2010 Kane County General Primary Elections. Mill Creek Elementary School is one of several off-site registration locations in the area. Anyone who has moved from another area in Illinois (or, within Kane County to a new address), or from out of state, may complete change of address forms or register as a new Illinois voter at the MCES office. The registration is valid for local, county, state and national elections. Two forms of identification with current address are required. People who miss the deadline to register to vote at an off-site location for the February 2nd General Primary may go to the Kane County Clerk’s Office, located at 719 South Batavia Avenue (Building B/North Entrance) in Geneva to register during the voter registration grace period, Wednesday, January 6 thru Tuesday, January 26, 2009. Everyone who registers to vote during the grace period and wants to vote in the upcoming General Primary, must vote at the time of registration. Off-site registration resumes on Thursday, February 4, 2010. Questions? Contact Peggy Crawford, Secretary to the Principal and MCES Kane County Deputy Registrar at 630-463-3403 or email her at pcrawford@geneva304.org.
So now that you are registered, what are the main primary races?
The biggest is the race for the U.S. House of Representative for Illinois District 14 to select a Republican candidate to run against Bill Foster in November. The Republican field recently narrowed to Ethan Hastert vs. Randall Hultgren when Mill Creek resident Jeff Danklefson, Elgin resident Mark Vargas and Batavia businessman Jim Purcell all withdrew from the race. With Hultgren the more experienced politician, but with Hastert having the big time name recognition and connections (Newt Gingrich campaigned for him recently in St. Charles), I suspect that Hastert will easily prevail if the poll on the Illinois Review blog is an accurate indication. You can check out both candidates responses to the questions of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board here for Hastert and here for Hultgren. I’d take either one over Democrat Bill Foster in November.
The second race of interest here is the race for Illinois House District 50. For regular readers here, I’m sure you’ve read about candidate Bob McQuillan from his work founding Taxfacts and his watchdog work with the Geneva District 304 School Board. What has not been widely reported is that he has just survived a petition challenge to his candidacy. You can read a summary here a the Illinois Review blog and you can go to his campaign website here for information on his positions. I’ll be supporting Bob McQuillan. State government in Springfield is a mess. Illinois will be running a $12 Billion deficit next year. We need somebody other than attorneys that turn into career politicians to go to Springfield to try to turn this state around. I barely know Bob, but I’ve seem him in action taking on the tax and spend Geneva School Board. We need to send about a hundred more Bob McQuillans down to Springfield to clean house.
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Why the slam on attorneys? Perhaps if Mr. FACTS had had competent counsel (or was one himself), he wouldn’t have allowed “printed” signatures in the first place; or, he’d done what almost all potential candidates do: get 2 or 3 times the number of necessary signatures on his petitions so as to avoid the cost and time of the fight he just completed. So, this potential “leader”, a non-attorney, has wasted time and funds that he could have used to actually campaign on defending his petitions. Is he just naive or something else? Hmmm, good thing he’s not an attorney.
All reasonable points about Bob McQuillan. Engaging a good attorney at the beginning would have been a smart move. That being said, what’s the point of nominating petitions anyway? In my opinion, they are just an unnecessary hurdle placed by the political powers that be to keep regular people out of politics.
My original point was not well stated. I was trying to say that I’d like to see more representatives from all walks of life, but it seems like at both the state and federal levels, we have disproportionate representation from the legal profession. Upon further reflection, though, I’m ok with anyone from any profession as long as they swear to uphold the Constitution. Lately though, it seems that many are treating it as optional set of guidelines or are ignoring it completely, unless it suits a political purpose.
OK, OK. It just bothers me when all the world’s troubles are dumped on my profession. Not every political criminal was a lawyer. Gov Ryan was a pharmacist, for example.
My impression on the petition requirement is that it separates the “wheat form the chaff” to a certain extent. Elections are costly to the body that runs them; therefore, you need to “cull the herd” down to those that are truly serious about the process. Well, that’s enough idioms for today.
As to your recommended candidate, I’d note that he is running to un-seat a non-attorney, Kay Hatcher, who further cannot be painted with the broad brush of being truly responsible for the “mess in Springfield”. She has only been there since her election in 2008. A more relevant analysis might be to examine what she has been able to accomplish in her first term, if anything, and compare that to what Bob wants to do. My guess is that the areas of agreement greatly outstrip their areas of diagreement.
Please note that I live just outside of the 50th Dist. and thus have no horse in this race. Damn, another idiom slipped out.