Critics say campaigns’ software makes petition challenges all too easy

Burt Odelson remembers spending long nights during the petition-challenge season, sitting at the city’s Board of Election Commissioners, combing through binder books filled with voters listed alphabetically or by precinct.

Technology has changed most of that, replacing binders with voter databases. Work once often done by ward volunteers now can be handled by software that sifts through thousands of signatures, seeking patterns that could lead to getting an opponent kicked off the ballot.

“They’ve made it too easy,” Odelson said. “You’re talking to an old guy. Now you see a lot of amateur objections because there are lawyers who’ve never done this before, and the volume of signatures makes it impossible to get through a real challenge.”

Odelson, who is representing Paul Vallas in the 2019 mayoral race, has been in the business of petition challenges and elections for about 46 years, he says, representing thousands of candidates — including a Daley, the city’s first woman mayor and a president facing a recount in Florida, to name a few.

Some candidates vying to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel have mixed the old ways with the new. The demands of getting 12,500 signatures, campaigning and fleshing out policies — and avoiding scandals — mean campaigns are capitalizing on ways to make petitions, and challenges, easier to ensure a spot on the ballot.

Software like VoteBuilder and Petition Review have made things easier.

VoteBuilder, used by largely on the national level by Democratic and progressive candidates, as well as by candidates, unions and non-profits at the local level. The software, by tech firm NGP VAN, allows candidates and their teams to hone their organizing efforts. Voter files are loaded into a system that allows campaigns or organizations to make lists for door knocking, phone banks and volunteers to better stump for their causes.

Amanda Coulombe, the general manager of organizing at VAN NGP, said several mayoral candidates are using the platform.

Petition Review, created by 2016 Metropolitan Water Reclamation District candidate Tom Greenhaw, allows candidates to check the validity of their own signatures and their rivals by comparing voter addresses on petitions to voter files from the state’s Board of Elections files; it doesn’t review the signatures themselves.

It also lets candidates create the exhibits needed for filing an objection, check for duplicate signatures within a petition or cross-check signatures between petitions for the same office to find people who have signed both, a person with knowledge of the system said.

Preckwinkle, Vallas and Jerry Joyce all have access to the software, though typically, only one candidate per office is allowed access to the system to “maintain the integrity of the election process” and to “allay the fear that candidates may be able to see each other’s data,” the person with knowledge of the system said. Emanuel’s sudden announcement that he won’t seek a third term changed the playing field for the 2019 race.

“[Campaigns] would’ve had to have tons of people at the board of elections and they would never have been able to go through all the signatures,” they said. “Petition Review makes the whole process 10 times faster.”

Michael Dorf would beg to differ. An election lawyer with 25 years of experience — who is representing Lori Lightfoot in the 2019 race — Dorf said the process may be faster, but that doesn’t mean its better.

“We always had a team who was doing it, who would go to the board of elections and comb through the registration records and mark things by hand,” Dorf said. “It’s so much easier now to push the button … you’ve got people doing this at 3 a.m., they’re punch-drunk and they just hit ‘object’ ‘object’ ‘object’ because, unlike having to mark the petitions yourself, you’re just punching a key on a keyboard — and you get thousands of phony objections that way.”

Dorf says he has no problem with the software programmers — just the way those programs are being used. He thinks the board of elections should take a look at the software to make sure objections comply with their policies. Dorf also said if the trend of software being used in petition challenges continues, there should be a penalty for campaigns filing “frivolous objections.”

Despite the challenges, Coulombe sees campaigns’ use of petition-review software as a good thing.

“Technology brings efficiency. I mean, actual time saving,” she said.

“I see [campaign technology] continuing to evolve in terms of allowing campaigns to do more, better, faster,” Coulombe added. “I think we’ll see campaigns and candidates continue to try to innovate to try to work on cross-channel communication to do things in a more responsive way. … Tech helps people do that more quickly and more effectively.”