Daily Herald opinion: Daunting election rules should be simplified to make elections more inviting

If you've never run for public office, you might assume the most important items to possess are an approachable smile, a firm handshake and comfortable shoes.

All those are necessary, of course.

But a law degree wouldn't hurt.

The filing period for candidates in the April 4 election for mayor, village president, village trustee, city council, school board member, library board, park commissioner and fire district trustee began Monday and ends at the close of business Dec. 19.

Candidates have been knocking on doors, collecting signatures on nominating petitions and submitting paperwork in order to appear on the ballot.

But before all of that - if they were smart - they brushed up on the daunting Illinois State Board of Elections' 63-page guidebook for candidates.

If you've never taken a look, trust us: it's probably one of the reasons why the numbers of cases in which there are more candidates than seats in a given race are so low.

Granted, our analysis after the 2019 local election showed an uptick in the percentage of contested races: 37%. But that was the first time in a decade we saw an increase. From 2009 to 2017, contested races in suburban Cook, Lake, DuPage and Kane counties fell from about 45 percent to barely 30 percent.

State and federal candidates hire election specialists who know: how to root out the number of signatures they need, how many additional signatures they need in order to ensure that if any are challenged, they'll still have enough; how many signatures is too many; how petitions must be filled out, labeled and combined; and when and where they must be submitted. For school board candidates, it's the county building. Elsewhere, it's at the government's headquarters.

Those campaigns that seek to limit competition need only find minor discrepancies in procedure to eliminate a candidate.

Those who falsify nominating petitions deserve to be bumped, but eliminating candidates on a technicality is just bad for democracy.

In local races, where much less money tends to get raised - think park board, library board and fire district races - campaigns tend to be kitchen table affairs. Especially in small towns.

First-time candidates can find it all overwhelming.

Perhaps if our processes were simpler, more people would be interested in participating in the process.

With more people sharing their views, the more choices voters have.

One certainly can't enter this arena without a full commitment.

Here's to hoping candidates for the village of Downers Grove, whose mayor-commissioner form of government is unusual for the suburbs, know that the Municipal Code, rather than the Illinois Election Code, is the law of the land there.

Lest you think running an election must be easier than running in an election, the election officials guidebook is still 60 pages long.