Naperville attorney Thomas J. Laz’s name will not be on the March 15 primary ballot after a “pattern of fraud” was found in his 18th Circuit judicial race nominating petitions, the DuPage Election Commission ruled Wednesday.
The three-member commission made up of Chairwoman Cathy Terrill and members Art Ludwig and James Lowe voted 2-1 to invalidate Laz’s petitions based on evidence presented by its lawyer John Toscas, who reviewed the challenge filed by Matthew Pike, of Lombard.
Laz can appeal the decision, but did not know if he would, he said after the hearing.
Laz submitted 726 signatures to be a Republican candidate on the ballot for circuit judge, 170 of which appeared to be invalid, Toscas said.
Although that left him with 556 valid signatures – 14 more than he needed to stay in the race – the commission opted not to throw out individual names but all six pages on which the bad signatures were found because of the “pattern of fraud” displayed.
Ludwig cast the dissenting vote, arguing that it was improper to reject a “whole page” of signatures rather than just those found to be invalid.
“We have pages of signatures again and again where half of them have been declared invalid, and the election code talks about their being ‘a pattern of fraud’,” Toscas said. “If there was just one or two, it wouldn’t be as significant, but with this many, it makes you wonder how many more there might be?”
Laz’s attorney Keri-Lyn Krafthefer, speaking before the hearing, said “invalid signatures turn up all the time” on petitions because they’re signed by people who haven’t registered to vote, have moved, have changed their name after a marriage or have some other problem that conflicts with the voting record the county clerk has on file for them.
“There are often dozens of people who are not registered voters or forget they have moved since the last election and have not updated their registration,” Krafthefer said.
“I’ve worked over 25 years in election law and the amount of illegal signatures here doesn’t constitute fraud.”
Laz said signatures that were challenged included names of current and past Naperville City Council and Naperville Township Board.
“I even was challenged about my brother, my nephew and my son,” Laz said.
Pike challenged Laz’s description of the office for which he was running as well, saying it was not written correctly and could mislead voters. The commission voted 3-0 against Pike on that point, saying the office “was not improperly designated.”
After the ruling, Laz said he “needed to think about” whether he wanted to appeal the ruling.
“I need to give this some thought,” he said. “You know the musical ‘Annie’ and the idea that ‘the sun will come up tomorrow.’ We’ll see.”
David Sharos is a freelance writer for the Naperville Sun.
