Despite being rejected in March, a similar ballot proposition on dissolving McHenry Township should have been on the November ballot, the court upholds
McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office lawyer Norm Vinton argues in front of the Illinois Supreme Court on Jan. 19, 2022, on behalf of McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio, who is challenging an appellate court ruling that he erred by keeping a McHenry Township ballot question that sought to abolish the local government from being decided by voters in the November 2020 election. He struck the referendum from the ballot because state law prohibits identical ballot questions from being asked in the same 23-month period, and McHenry Township voters turned down an effort to dissolve the agency just months before the fall 2020 election. (Illinois Supreme Court)
The McHenry County clerk did not have the authority to throw out a McHenry Township ballot question, even if it was almost identical to a question rejected months earlier, the Illinois Supreme Court said in a decision Wednesday.
The legal battle centered on whether a referendum question put forth by McHenry Township trustees asking voters if they wanted to dissolve the township should have remained on the November 2020 ballot.
The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous and upholds a similar ruling by the Illinois 2nd District Appellate Court last year.
“When a township board of trustees in McHenry County adopts a resolution to initiate and submit to the voters a public question to dissolve the township, the proposition must adhere to Article 28 of the Election Code,” the opinion, which was written by Justice Michael Burke, concluded. “The relevant section did not authorize the county clerk to prohibit the dissolution proposition from appearing on the ballot.”
McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio had removed the question from the ballot because it was similar to another referendum, on the ballot through voter petition in March 2020, that failed. Tirio pointed to a section of election law that states identical ballot initiatives cannot appear within 23 months of one another.
The Supreme Court decision said another part of the law makes it so that the clerk is not authorized to make that determination.
“Statute specifically says that if presented with something that is prohibited, I’m supposed to turn it back, in this case to the township clerk,” Tirio said at the time of the appellate court decision.
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