Daily Herald Editorial: BOE decision has value beyond whether Trump could remain on state's primary ballot

It is gratifying to say that the Illinois State Board of Elections made the right decision Tuesday in allowing former President Donald Trump to stay on the Illinois primary ballot. But it is not the board’s decision that brings some encouragement so much as how it was made, by unanimous vote based on the members’ interpretation of their authority as a board.

Supporters of removing Trump complained that the board was “ducking” a responsibility to determine whether the former president should be disqualified because he supported an insurrection against the United States on Jan. 6, 2021. That argument requires concurrence on two key points — one, that what happened at the Capitol that day amounted to an insurrection, and, two, that a state board of elections has the authority to make that determination and rule a candidate unqualified to receive votes for office.

On the first, even some Republicans on the board acknowledged that the Jan. 6 events amounted to an attempt to overthrow an official action of the United States government. But on the second, all members agreed there is at least a question of whether they have the authority to disqualify a candidate on those grounds.

That question, of course, is about to be determined by the United States Supreme Court when it takes up the issue next week in a review of a challenge to the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify Trump from that state’s ballot.

The Illinois elections board certainly could have reached a similar conclusion to Colorado’s, but that would at best have been a Pyrrhic victory. For, declaring Trump unqualified not only could be overruled by a pending U.S. Supreme Court action but also would further deepen both the political divide separating voters today and the skepticism many Republican voters hold toward the integrity of our institutions.

Call it “ducking” if you will, but the BOE decision removes the justification for suspicion about the board’s motives and assures skeptics that appropriate lines of institutional authority are established and followed.

This issue was further complicated by the even split between Democrats and Republicans on the eight-member BOE. A 4-4 vote on the ballot question — a possibility all too imaginable in today’s partisan politics — would surely have damaged our political environment still further.

Instead, we have a situation in which the Republican retired judge who advised the board made it clear that he considers Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 insurrectionist, and at least one Republican on the board itself echoed the sentiment.

“I want it to be clear that this Republican believes that there was an insurrection on Jan. 6,” said Catherine McCrory. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on Jan. 6.”

Bold declarations such as these from Republicans do more to help the cause of our discourse, in fact, than any potentially impotent statement on the former president’s qualification to seek office. An illusory show of political moxie by Democrats would surely have only damaged that cause.

It is the Supreme Court that will determine the ability of state boards to disqualify ballot candidates on the basis of accusations of federal crimes. It likely will fall eventually to that court as well to determine whether this candidate is qualified to seek the presidency. The state board of elections could only have complicated these simple truths and disrupted our political interactions in the process.

BOE’s overwhelming, unanimous statement avoids that result.