for purposes of being a political party candidate in a primary election this issue has been decided by two different appellate courts in the last few years the first case to decide this was for the second district in the case of cullerton vs two page county in two thousand and eight the second case was from earlier this year in a decision below in this case from the first district for a long time illinois had a restriction on switching political parties of two years and that applied to three different categories that applied to voters it applied to who signed nominating petitions and it just lied to candidates so if you voted in a party's primary election you were precluded from doing one of those three things for the next two years officers electoral board this court invalidated that provision due to your party switching restriction as it applied to people who sign nominating petitions what the court went on to do in sperling was to say that because the system was intertwined it appeared in this in fact in the same sentence in the statute the court held that all role the provision regarding party switching by candidates may be enforceable and constitutional on its own because it's intertwined with petition signers it held that was also party switching by candidates and party affiliation by candidates the statute contains two references at the beginning of the section this is section eight that shape and it's also appears in section seven x ten but for our purposes a it refers to a qualified primary voter in this in the section that requires a candidate to fill out a statement of candidacy in which they swear that they are qualified primary voter of the party whose nomination they seek later on in the same section is the sentence that contained the the section but they left intact the provision regarding qualified primary voters in the statement of candidacy section so that's where the status was after the one nine hundred ninety amendment to the election code until the cullerton case in two thousand and eight what happened in that cullerton case is that the candidate mr cullerton voted in the republican primary in two thousand and eight after the primary election the democrats appointed him to fill a vacancy and nomination a vacancy a nomination correct what happened after college and voted in the primary like this was a consolidated primary election i'm sorry this was at the primary election in colors and was not preceded by another general election that's right that's a factual distinction between here and with that in fact what mr olson is going to argue was that just the dispositive distinction in the case and we think that's wrong we think that the color to decision is the proper interpretation of the statute and that the that the decision below is improper one for two reasons the first reason is that the legislature has never endorsed the restriction that the court the law will apply the legislature has acted twice in this regard the first thing the legislature did was it imposed the two your party switching requirement before spoiled so the only the first thing they did was there was a two year party switching restriction the next thing that the legislature did in one thousand nine hundred after sperling was it deleted a sentence from the section it didn't add anything it didn't add any new language it simply deleted one reference to party switching by petition signers the only reference and it deleted one reference of to two party switching for candidates so the collection court said the let the legislature when it and acted business this act will quote left intact close quote the restriction for candidates so the reason that the coaching quote was right one day when it said that is because the legislature only deleted language it didn't add anything new it didn't shorten the period it said that it left to the legislature left the party switching restriction intact if it was left intact it could only be in the iteration that it was before the enactment which was a two year restriction so the in the court below the court adopted this restriction what rauschenberg did in this in this case is he voted in two thousand and nine in a consolidated primary election then voted in the consolidated general election in april of two thousand and eight or two thousand and i'm sorry and then in october of two thousand and nine he signed a statement of candidacy in which he swore he was a qualified primary voter of the republican party despite the fact that when he voted in the two thousand and nine primary he voted in the democratic primary so what the court below did is it attempted to distinguish quality based on that factual distinction that there was an intervening general election so what the court's interpretation below and what mr what mr olson's argument is that that party switching restriction is limited to the instance of a general election and the primary election that immediately proceeded what he calls an election cycle the court below refers to an election cycle that it's a primary the ensuing general and nothing else i think that's the improper interpretation of the statute for the reasons i just said about the legislative action the legislature has never in has never passed a bill that says that and they could they do lecture they certainly they could but they haven't they've only election that he could be subject to a qualification challenge in the senate i suppose if he's elected to the senate but i also think that this is a question that needs to be resolved so i think the public interest exemption as i set forth in my brief applies to this i think that this question needs to be resolved one way or the other when when are you eligible to be a candidate based on your prior voting behavior so you're not asking this court to remove him from the oh yes we are your honor we would like a ruling that he is ineligible that he should have been ruled reversing the decision below and a decision decision of the auto board which would render him ineligible which would create what the statute refers to as a vacancy a nomination which could be filled by the local political party  mr cullerton was improperly removed from the ballot because if there are no time restrictions then he should then the result in the colors and case should have been reversed and then and so that at least i understand i can understand the argument that cullerton was wrong when they said the legislation left intact the party switching restriction as it applied to candidates but i don't understand is how any reasonable interpretation could be that the legislature changed it and the difficulty with with that  candidates than voters generally and in fact this court in the sperling decision said quote that the restriction on candidates meaning to two years could be upheld against cancer to tional challenge is however of little help here such restrictions and establishment of periods of time involved are within constitutional limits matters for legislative determination will school so the court has specific this court specifically hinted that the two year restriction is constitutional the federal district court in chicago intended your vs all will be presupposing in one thousand nine hundred one specifically ruled that the two year restriction on candidates is constitutional other states have had longer party switching restrictions i only cited one of them in my brief store versus brown evolve in california which correct that that's right cause for did invalidate always frictions time restrictions regarding regarding voters now illinois in the legislature is never reacted and there there have been cases that have an appellate restrictions voters you have to be registered for two days before the election that kind of thing but we do not have any of those so in the other reason why i believe you don't need colored and stands for the proposition that you can't run in one or days primary and then be on the ballot in the same election cycle on the other party's general election you don't like it's not limited no i don't think it's limited to that to that universe i think it's wrong to say what happened worse correct that's right in the reason why that should that is not the rule is because that will doesn't make any sense everyone who runs in a primary election has to sign a statement of candidacy in which they attest that there are qualified primary voters under that rule and if you buy into this notion of the cycle a cycle is two years under that interpretation of the word qualified primary voter really only has any teeth for about one third of the entire cycle it only applies after the primary and before the general well we don't nominate our candidates in that period by a large both parties the democrats and the republicans we nominate our candidates after the primary and of course you have to sign that paper well in advance of the primaries so under that  that it only gets teeth at the primary and loses its teeth i suppose at the general or some other time as i point out in my brief it only applies to a handful of candidates well why would everybody have to sign a statement can't see that only applies to a handful of people and the other reason is that it means that the meaning of the phrase has to change at some point during the cycle if rauschenberg could sign that statement of candidacy before the primary and signed exactly the same piece of paper after the primary then it would have two different meanings i think that the light if the legislature intended the statutory term qualified primary voters to change during the course of the cycle it would not only number one of when the changes which it apparently didn't and to what a change from to what a change to and that none of that is set forth in the statute so you're left with this provision where the phrase means one thing before the primary one thing after the primary before the general and then it means something else again going back to its original phrase which really has no meaning at all after the general election so the phrase has to change meanings in order to adopt the decision below and so there's really been three and that means here one by the legislature to impose the to your wall in the first place before spiraling second to delete one reference to candidate party switching and then the third was the decision below which shortened the legislature never shortened the period but that's what the decision below means it means that the period was short i think the colors and decision got it right either it was left in or it was defeated but it can't have been short i don't think it's the nature of the election that determines it's then it's the timeframe that the rule is simpler and more easy to understand for voters and for candidates in for political parties if the rule is based on time not a based activity so some elections are partisan and some elections are not mr rosenberg just happens to live in an area where they have partisan township elections and i number of years are you saying here that often it's two thousand and nine only t under your argument yes yes because there was an there was in another primary election of which he voted as a democrat in two thousand and nine and which you know very appealing or just take the situation of a person runs votes as a democrat or a republican in two thousand and eight and then wants to run as a governor in two thousand and and he do that not unless there is an intervening primary election in which he can refute not the others on the who is elected as a republican in two thousand he switches party allegiance in two thousand and nine and the run as a democrat in two thousand i think i think that's a more difficult question but i think the answer to that has got to be no under illinois law the way it is i think that's got to be that's got to be law some constitutional infringement upon the rights of candidates and political parties in effect his argument is the gist of his argument is that that period is too long as i said before i think that that argument should be rejected based on what this court has previously said and sperling based on the federal district court in bend in your which specifically upheld the two year restriction and finally because of the water that statutory provisions that have been upheld in other states in addition he claims that it's somehow the the rights of affiliation rights of association of political parties would be impacted by this the right of say the republicans to pick the candidate they should be able to choose whomever they want and that any restriction at all is a constitutional infringement on that well that would have legal force to the democrats when we tried to appoint cullerton in two thousand and eight and that was invalidated and mr olson as he was removing mr cullerton didn't seem to have an objection to that but more importantly in in all of had a rule party rule saying anybody could vote if you were a registered republican or an independent that conflicted with the state statute the u s supreme court ruled with the party and enabled them to open their primary in this case there's no evidence in this record that the in this case is that there was then the nature of the consolidated election so there was a consolidated primary followed by a consolidated general and then the statement of candidacy whereas in cullerton there was no intervening consolidated election but that's correct and in this case just a follow up i thought that there is no evidence that there's a conflict between the party rules and the state statute regarding candidate eligibility in this case the candidate mr rauschenberg or voted within the window of the prohibition on party switch that was in fact in the statute prior to spurling and that the college and court ruled remained in place after the amendment by the legislature because he voted as a democrat within that window but the order was republican candidacy was closed for that reason he should have been ruled ineligible and his name should not have been allowed to appear on the ballot for that reason we ask that the in preventing party raising are the two elements necessary for the legislature to pass a law which locks out a candidate or a voter or a senator from participating in elections that's what the united states supreme court said in customer which is night in one nine hundred seventy three united states supreme court case of course the benadryl case which mr kasper referred to was a the political party primary process within a twenty three month period after you have already voted in one primary you were locked out the customer base really is the essence of what we're dealing with here says because because from their cost per case this court and spiraling and this court in julie for a twenty three month period everything fell now and everything fell we all know what needs to happen the general somebody has to act to implement a law if it feels the need in the sesame to prevent party rating and to preserve the integrity of the electoral process by not allowing crossovers in voting polity rady what is that all about what d it mean back in one nine hundred seventy one of course the courts talk about one political party sending all their troops over to vote into the other in the other political party's primary to dilute to run a a soft candidate to dilute that registered republican who had voted republican for years and who voted republican in the february two thousand a primary was recruited fifty eight days after the primary because the democratic party failed to run anyone in the twenty third legislative district race so they had a vacancy they had to fill well who should we get will get the guy who judges or need in the opposite political party just sad when he registered when he came in and declared himself which is the only remaining qualification in seven days forty three that you must declare your party affiliation when mr college didn't declare that he was a republican he in fact was locked in in the primary to take a republican ballot and vote republican then when you got to the general election you can vote as you know you got any way you want everybody's on the ballot however what the democratic party did was take the republican in fifty eight days later tried to make him into a democrat where he swore he was a qualified democratic voter are the democrat party the  colored case is correct justice or merely went a little far afield when he stated that you couldn't change parties from the two thousand and eight primaries to the two thousand and ten primary because he didn't take into consideration the two thousand and nine intervening consolidator primary where mr ross from berger who for years voted republican for years was a state senator in this state republican state senator voted in the eldridge township democratic primary for his sister who was running as a democrat he voted in february of two thousand and nine in the primary the clearing himself to be a democrat the feb two thousand and ten election as a republican to run in the republican primary i would submit your honors there is no law there is no statute there is no legislation which prohibits anyone from doing exactly what the russian burger did after one primary and general russian was done he exercised a string of association his freedom of speech executed a stake in the fantasy and sought to run in the republican primary which he did and which he won seven there's forty three only thing right is that a voter must declare his party affiliation that's all a test eight which is the section of the code you apply to state senators and state representatives specifies a primary voter may not sign petitions or be a candidate of more than one political party mr rauschenberg or certainly didn't seek to do that he ended his political cycle of being a democrat after sizing his rights in the consolidated primary of zero nine he then began the next cycle by exercising his rights to run as a republican in february of two thousand and ten out of cases are very well thought out and very clear stemming from the cost per case to the spirally case to the duly case to the colored case to this case and voters know annoying know that now in illinois until the general somebody asks can switch parties from primary to primary not within the same primary still restriction on it but from primary primary can there be a restriction yes i agree with most mr caster there can be a restriction new york as a restriction but in new york you can register thirty days prior to the general election and the clear w affiliation is for the next primary we can have the same provision as the united states supreme court held in rosario however we don't we have what we have and that is  signers who can now cross over from primary to primary and to candidates as you didn't do it again in your language unduly in the last paragraph is extremely strong and applies  thank you dreier very briefly mr olson paints a picture of i think what he thinks the law ought to be and maybe he's right but that's not what the law is that decision is up to the legislature the legislature can decide how long the restriction on party switching can be as long as it's within constitutional bounds the legislature has never shortened that period to be limited to a cycle told so that it only applies in that period between the primary and the ensuing general election they could do that but they have not done so and as i said maybe that ought to be the rule but it's not the legislature has only done two things they imposed a two year requirement and then they deleted one reference to the to your requirement but left in the provision regarding a qualified primary vote so it's either one or the other until the legislature imposes a different rule so i think the decision for this court is either is the color chink case got it right or the cotton case got it wrong but shortening the period i don't think has any support from the legislative activity at all i don't think the public act eighty six to thirteen forty eight can't possibly be read to shorten that party switching period and maybe that's the way the legislature ought to do it but they haven't done it yet and because of that mr rauschenberg or fell into that window in which party switching was prohibited and therefore these candidates she should have been ruled ineligible have nothing further unless there's becomes thank you seven to five is taken under advisement as agenda number twenty four the court will be taking a recess during which we will make a decision on this case and return a in this case the court has examined the briefs with it listened carefully to the arguments this morning and feel that expediting this matter is consistent with justice and we would no