Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/444

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NORMAN v. REED Opinion of the Court

county offices.4 It decided, among other things, that § 10–2 did not apply because the judgeships at issue were not offices of the same “political subdivision” as nonjudicial offices within Cook County. On appeal, the Circuit Court of Cook County affirmed the Board’s ruling on the use of the HWP name, but on grounds different from the Board’s. It ruled that while Evans had no statutory power to authorize the use of the Party name, § 10–2 implicitly confined the scope of § 10–5 to cases where two parties seeking to use the same name coexist in the same political subdivision. Since Cook County and the city of Chicago are separate subdivisions, the Circuit Court found no violation of the Election Code. The Circuit Court nonetheless held that under the plain language of § 10–2, petitioners’ failure to obtain 25,000 signatures for the suburban-district candidates doomed the entire slate, and it alternatively held that petitioners’ failure to list Party candidates for judicial office compelled the same result. For these two independent reasons, the Circuit Court reversed the Board.5 On review, the Supreme Court of Illinois held in a brief written order that § 10–5 prohibited petitioners from using the HWP name, and that their failure to gather enough signatures for the candidates in the suburban-district races disqualified the entire slate. It expressly declined “to discuss other points raised on the appeal” and thus chose not to ad4

Reed based her argument on what the parties call the “complete slate requirement” of § 10–2. The parties occasionally use the same term in their discussion of a separate issue, whether petitioners’ failure to collect sufficient signatures in the suburban district voids their entire slate. For clarity, we avoid using the term altogether. 5 The Circuit Court also held that petitioners’ failure to gather 25,000 signatures for the candidates running under the Party name for office in the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District disqualified those candidates, but not the rest of the slate, because the Water Reclamation District was a separate political subdivision from Cook County. This ruling was not appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court and is not before this Court.