THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: Danville resident Lynn McLinden, left, speaks before the Danville Area Community College Electoral Board Wednesday morning. McLinden filed an objection to outgoing President Dr. Stephen Nacco’s election paperwork to run for the DACC Board of Trustees in the April, 2025 election.
DANVILLE — The Danville Area Community College Electoral Board has delayed making a ruling on the validity of outgoing President Stephen Nacco’s election paperwork to run for Board of Trustees in the April 2025 election.
The board, consisting of DACC board trustees Greg Wolfe, Tracy Cherry and Sandra Finch, met for about an hour and a half on Wednesday before continuing the hearing to a future date. The board still has questions and wanted to confirm certain information prior to making a decision on whether Nacco shall remain on the ballot.
Questions by the board remain on whether entire sheets of registered voter signatures in Nacco’s election petition are to be thrown out due to all heading information not being at the top of the sheets.
For example, McLinden objects that Nacco didn’t have DACC’s college district #507 on a sheet.
In total, McLinden is objecting to 36 of Nacco’s 72 registered voter signatures on the election papers. If they are all thrown out, that leaves 36 valid signatures which is less than the 50 signatures required for a candidate.
McLinden indicated Nacco’s petition was the only one he reviewed, also saying he had some help analyzing all the paperwork and signatures.
“I’m concerned with this nomination,” he said, adding that he wasn’t concerned about any other aldermen, or other board or DACC board candidates.
Board Attorney Jerry Davis said he’ll look at case law regarding the objections.
Finch also questioned Nacco not having law or statute, but only what Vermilion County Supervisor of Elections Carrie Wilson told him, about it being DACC election official Kerri Thurman’s responsibility to review any candidate’s paperwork and see if anything is missing before accepting it. In this case, Thurman didn’t catch the missing district number 507 or Illinois missing on a sheet as the state Nacco lives in on the paperwork and didn’t require Nacco to fill those in.
Thurman said she has a checklist she follows regarding accepting election paperwork. The checklist doesn’t state she’s to check all petitions and make sure everything is filled in.
Finch said she wants to see the law in writing regarding local election officials’ duties.
McLinden said if the board allows Nacco to remain on the ballot, he will appeal to have a judge decide, but he hopes it doesn’t come to that.
Of the signatures McLinden is objecting their validity to, some are due to not being a registered voter at a certain address. He also has questions on the appearance of the same cursive handwriting for multiple signatures and what he claims as DACC employees, against DACC’s ethics policy regarding prohibited campus political activity, signing Nacco’s paperwork too.
Nacco said the employees in question are with Vermilion County Works, not a DACC facility.
McLinden said his objections on some signatures on Nacco’s petitions are by visual reviews and addresses not matching voter registration cards.
Cherry said some of the signature questions are hearsay and there’s no proof. Finch agreed, saying “we’re not experts in handwriting. That’s something we can’t even look at.”
But they can look at the registered voter addresses as evidence and if some voters had recently changed addresses to see if they can legally be accepted or not, Finch said.
McLinden said his objection falls into two areas, sheets of signatures that should be eliminated for deficient information under the state statute and individual signatures.
Nacco presented to the board what he called Wilson’s interpretation of the legal statute regarding Thurman’s role to inspect petitions for “apparent conformity” and neither the state of Illinois’ candidate’s guide nor petition packet says the penalty for an omission is to eliminate the entire sheet of registered voter signatures.
McLinden said this is unfair to Thurman and other local election officials to find omissions. It’s up to each candidate, McLinden said.
“This case should really be determined by the facts and the law,” he said.
Nacco also indicated Wilson and others have said they are willing to testify in an appeal of the board’s decision.
The board said a lot of the information was just given to them on Wednesday and they want to fully review everything.
Wolfe said they’ll get information out as soon as they can and schedule a hearing continuance date.
Wolfe said the objection and hearing is unprecedented for the college and board members.
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