Paperwork snafu means no names on ballot in small Illinois town

BANNOCKBURN, Ill. -- Imagine walking into a voting booth, opening up a ballot and finding absolutely no candidates to choose from.

That's what voters in the tiny Lake County community of Bannockburn will find when they go to the polls in April.

Because of a paperwork error, the ballot will list only the offices up for election, namely village president, clerk and four trustees. Where voters would expect to find the names of the people vying for those offices will be the words, "no candidate."

"It's ugly," said Michael Grutza, the president of the exclusive North Shore village of country estates. "You'd think we could figure out how to get the paperwork right."

It turns out the nominating petitions were chock full of mistakes, including papers signed in the wrong places by the wrong people and various forms submitted in the wrong sequence.

"It was pretty sloppy paperwork by all of us," said Grutza, who like the rest of the candidates had expected to run unopposed on the ballot.

It may have been paperwork that was no sloppier than it's been for years. "I'd be willing to bet you that these nominating petitions have been done wrong for the last 20 years and nobody realized it," said trustee Jim Barkemeyer.

But this year, resident Bruce Nelson took a look. Nelson is critical of the village's decades-old caucus system to select candidates. Under the system, members of the caucus interview candidates and then arrange for the names of those candidates they recommend to appear on the ballot.

Nelson said not only does the system give too much influence to the handful of people on the caucus, but also this year the 11 members of the caucus spent more time discussing the personalities of potential candidates than their qualifications.

Nelson decided to examine the nominating papers "because I've known they've done it wrong in the past, " he said. Then he challenged those petitions.

Barkemeyer countered that the challenges to what he sees as minor problems is simply the actions of "one resident who I think has got some bone to pick with somebody..."

Whatever the case, all the caucus candidates decided to withdraw their nominating petitions and file as write-in candidates.

"We just felt like we made a mistake," said trustee Sandra Labunski.

Because they still expect to be unopposed, the candidates are not worried about losing their seats.

"No one is knocking down the door to get these jobs," said Labunski. "And if they want our jobs they can have them. It's not like we get paid anything for this."