Court Opinion

ID: 9742187
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:08:11.331958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:29.303805
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE BILANDIC, also dissenting: The majority requires the Illinois State Board of Elections (the Board) to conduct a public hearing on complaints filed with the Board even though the Board unanimously decided to dismiss the complaints because the Board was not able to determine with five affirmative votes that the complaints were filed on justifiable grounds. This determination conflicts with the provisions of the Election Code that govern the Board’s actions, and with a prior decision of this court. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. The Board is an administrative agency created by the Illinois Constitution of 1970. The Illinois Constitution, in creating the Board, specifically contemplated that the Board would operate by consensus across political party lines by requiring that “[n]o political party shall have a majority of members of the Board.” Ill. Const. 1970, art. Ill, § 5. The General Assembly, pursuant to the bipartisan mandate of the Illinois Constitution, determined that the Board shall consist of eight members split equally between two political parties. 10 ILCS 5/1A — 2 (West 1996). Four members of the Board must be affiliated with the same political party as the Governor, and four members must be affiliated with the political party whose nominee for Governor in the most recent general election received the second highest number of votes. 10 ILCS 5/1A — 2 (West 1996). Consequently, the Board currently is comprised of members whose political affiliation is allocated equally between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Moreover, to ensure bipartisan cooperation among the Board members, the General Assembly determined that five votes are required for any action of the Board to become effective. 10 ILCS 5/1A — 7 (West 1996). In this case, after a closed preliminary hearing, the complainant did not convince the required five members of the Board that there were justifiable grounds to proceed on its complaints. Accordingly, the Board unanimously decided not to take further action and dismissed the complaints on procedural grounds. Section 1A — 7 of the Election Code (10 ILCS 5/1A — 7 (West 1996)) dictates that five votes are necessary for effective Board action. The Board’s dismissal of the complaints comports with that section because there were insufficient votes to support a finding that the complaints were filed on justifiable grounds. I disagree with the majority’s determination that, because the Board failed to achieve a vote of five members to dismiss the complaints as not filed on justifiable grounds, the Board was required to proceed with a public hearing. A decision to proceed with a public hearing on a complaint constitutes an action of the Board. It therefore follows that, under section 1A — 7 of the Election Code, such a decision requires five affirmative votes of the Board members. The Board did not have the requisite number of votes, as required by section 1A — 7, to take any further action, including conducting a public hearing. Instead, the Board unanimously voted not to take further action. Thus, the majority’s holding is contradicted by the statutory mandate that five votes are necessary for any action of the Board to become effective. The plain language of section 9 — 21 of the Election Code (10 ILCS 5/9 — 21 (West 1996)) likewise does not support remanding this cause for a public hearing. There is nothing in the language of section 9 — 21 that requires the Board to hold a public hearing where there are not sufficient votes to determine that a complaint was filed on justifiable grounds. The Board’s obligation under section 9 — 21 is to hold a closed preliminary hearing to determine whether the complaint was filed on justifiable grounds. 10 ILCS 5/9 — 21 (West 1996). The Board fulfilled that duty. At the conclusion of the closed preliminary hearing, the statute authorizes the Board to “dismiss the complaint without further hearing” if it determines that the complaint has not been filed on justifiable grounds. 10 ILCS 5/9 — 21 (West 1996). This authorization to dismiss a complaint at an early stage, in the absence of justifiable grounds, does not mandate that the Board hold a public hearing if it deadlocks on this issue. Section 9 — 21 does not mention such a requirement, and such a requirement cannot be created or implied. See Kraft, Inc. v. Edgar, 138 Ill. 2d 178, 189 (1990) (stating that “a court is not at liberty to depart from the plain language and meaning of the statute by reading into it exceptions, limitations or conditions that the legislature did not express”). Moreover, as noted by the appellate court in rejecting this interpretation of section 9 — 21, requiring the Board to proceed with a public hearing on every complaint absent five votes to dismiss would thwart the purpose of the statute: “[T]he purpose of a closed preliminary hearing is ‘to prevent the Board being made an instrument for the transmission of unfair accusations of wrongdoing made by political partisans against their opponents under circumstances in which the accused have an unfair and inadequate opportunity to defend themselves, such as untrue or ill-founded accusations filed a scant few days before an election.’ Such purpose might be subverted were all complaints subject to public scrutiny absent a five-vote bipartisan consensus.” 294 Ill. App. 3d at 924. As a final matter, the majority fails to recognize that the Board is entitled to deadlock on issues where it cannot obtain the five votes necessary to take further action. The Election Code does not require the Board’s deadlock to be broken in favor of proceeding on the complaints. In fact, this court found unconstitutional a previous legislative attempt to break a Board deadlock. See Walker v. State Board of Elections, 65 Ill. 2d 543 (1976). In Walker, the plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Election Code, including a provision which established a method to resolve tie votes of the Board. The challenged tie-breaker section of the Election Code provided that, in the event of a tie vote on the Board with respect to proposed Board action, one Board member’s name would be drawn randomly by lot, and that Board member would be disqualified from voting on the proposed action. Walker, 65 Ill. 2d at 562-63. This court held that the tie-breaker provision, which resulted in the removal of a Board member for purposes of one deadlock vote, violated the mandate of article III, section 5, of the Illinois Constitution, which provides that no political party have a majority on the Board. Walker, 65 Ill. 2d at 565. The Walker court reasoned that if one Board member was removed from the Board by random draw, the removed Board member’s political party would then be a minority on the Board. Walker, 65 Ill. 2d at 564-65. Likewise here, the majority improperly attempts to break the Board’s deadlock by remanding for a public hearing. Such judicial intervention in a Board deadlock was not intended by the drafters of our state constitution. Nor, as earlier discussed, is this contemplated in the Election Code. For these reasons, I would find that the Board’s unanimous dismissal of the complaints and decision not to take further action were in full compliance with constitutional and statutory mandates and, therefore, should be affirmed. CHIEF JUSTICE FREEMAN and JUSTICE McMORROW join in this dissent.