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After candidate slate controversy, Mount Prospect adjusts election code

In the wake of controversy over a two-member slate filing to run for village board seats in the April election, Mount Prospect trustees have banned candidates from jointly submitting nominating petitions in future elections.

An ordinance approved Tuesday states that the filing of joint nomination papers "is not in apparent conformity with the village's nonpartisan system for electing officers."

The issue arose in December, when trustee candidates Terri Gens and Peggy Pissarreck put their names on the same nominating petitions, as part of their plans to run as a slate this spring.

Former Trustee Steven Polit and resident Tom Manion objected, saying that violates a village ordinance making the board elections nonpartisan.

The objection was thrown out Jan. 15 by the village's electoral board, which cited an appellate court ruling in a similar case out of South suburban Oak Lawn.

"So, although the court said it was improper, it was basically harmless error, and as long as the petitions weren't fraudulent or so confusing that someone wouldn't have realized they were signing for two candidates, rather than one, they should remain on the ballot," Village Attorney Lance Malina said in explaining the ruling.

As a result of the ruling, Trustee William Grossi suggested trustees adjust the village ordinance to make it clear that there should only be one candidate per petition.

Malina said that with the board's action Tuesday, it's now clear that more than one name on a petition is barred and will be "grounds to not certify candidates that did that in the future."

Mayor Arlene Juracek, a member of the electoral board, said that when the village's ordinance calling for nonpartisan elections was passed in 2010, no one anticipated the situation.

"We just had the Oak Lawn court precedent that we could deal with," she said.

Juracek also disputed comments that she had called the petitions of Gens and Pissarreck in "substantial compliance with our ordinance."

"What I had said was, 'But for the two names at the top, the petition was in substantial compliance,'" because both had filed separate statements of economic interest and statements of candidacy and no one had challenged the signatures," she said.

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