For a while, it looked as if community activist and lawyer Newton Finn, who is challenging his April 1 election loss to Waukegan Mayor William F. Durkin, never would get his day in court.
Ten Lake County Circuit Court judges recused themselves from hearing a lawsuit Finn filed last week against Durkin, other Waukegan officials and the Lake County clerk’s office.
The judges cited scheduling problems and other conflicts in refusing to hear the lawsuit, which Finn hopes will lead to him being declared the winner in the mayor’s race.
But on Wednesday, Chief Judge Raymond J. McKoski ordered the case moved to McHenry County Circuit Court in Woodstock for a hearing Monday before Judge Maureen P. McIntyre.
“She will make time for the case,” McKoski told Finn and other lawyers during a brief hearing in his Waukegan courtroom.
Finn, who ran as an independent against Durkin, a Democrat, came up 36 votes short. Ald. Larry TenPas (6th), a Republican, ran a distant third.
Finn’s suit contends the results in 41 of Waukegan’s 45 precincts are invalid because of what he called illegal absentee-voting procedures by the clerk’s office.
The suit says that many absentee ballots collected by the clerk’s office indicate the voter was “physically incapacitated,” but fail to state the reason for the incapacity.
A 1991 Illinois Appellate Court ruling held that absentee voters must provide a reason for their incapacitation, an Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman said.
Other absentee voters failed to state any reason for not voting on election day, the lawsuit says, an apparent violation of state law.
Finn, who is representing himself, is challenging 256 of the nearly 600 absentee ballots cast in the mayor’s race. About 200 of the challenged ballots were cast by nursing home residents, records show.
Clerk Willard Helander said her office has used the same absentee-ballot forms for 20 years, and no questions have been raised about them.
Those eligible for absentee voting include registered voters who are out of town, physically disabled voters, students attending school outside the county, pretrial detainees, people on jury duty, people observing a religious holiday and county elections workers.
Instead of trying to have the contested absentee ballots thrown out, Finn’s lawsuit seeks to have them divided among the candidates, based on the percentages of the total vote that they received.
Using that system, Finn contends he would wind up a winner by 10 votes.
As he has since the final days of the campaign, Finn refused to talk to reporters Wednesday.
Durkin has hired Michael LaVelle of Oak Park, the former chairman of the State Board of Elections and a former member of the Chicago Board of Elections, to represent him in the case.
Mary Ellen Vanderventer, Durkin’s daughter, campaign manager and the county’s former elections administrator, said her father was confident his victory would stand.
Vanderventer said nearly 150 of the 256 absentee voters named in Finn’s lawsuit had attended a special program offered by the clerk’s office to make sure they filled out their ballots properly.
“These voters had no knowledge” the absentee-ballot form may have been faulty, she said.
Vanderventer said Finn also is assuming that the absentee voters cast ballots in the mayor’s race.
An examination of the results supplied by the clerk’s office show that at least 331 Waukegan voters passed over the mayor’s race, not supporting any of the three candidates, Vanderventer said.
She also said that if any kind of recount of the election returns is ordered, the absentee ballots from all 45 precincts should be counted, not just the 41 selected by Finn.
“He only wants to recount the votes that favor him,” she said. “He conveniently left out a few.”
Durkin, 67, who is scheduled to be sworn in next month to begin serving his second term, did not attend Wednesday’s hearing.
