As with fish, the Chicago Board of Elections (CBOE) is rotting from the head down. The Cook County Circuit Court is currently deciding whether or not to remove CBOE Chairman Langdon Neal from office. During his 15 year tenure, CBOE Chairman Neal has personally earned $30 to $40 million from numerous and substantial conflicts of interests. Neal’s law firm received over $100 million from the same public officials whose elections he conducted and certified. Neal personally collected over $11 million in fees for lobbying the mayor and aldermen whose elections he previously oversaw.

In spite of the intense scrutiny of Neal’s private legal business conflicting with his election commissioner duties, Neal continues to abuse his election authority. Recently CBOE Chairman Neal and his underlings denied ballot access to all nine Illinois republican state legislative candidates who filed in Chicago to run against democrats in November.

Illinois election law requires state representative and state senator candidates to submit a minimum number of signatures for their names to appear on the ballot. The number of required signatures varies with each candidate’s district. Three of the nine republican candidates–Scott Campbell, George MaAyteh, and Tom Morris–needed a minimum of 1,000 valid signatures and the remaining six candidates needed at least 500 valid signatures (see table below).

CBOE Chairman Neal and two other CBOE commissioners had the final authority to determine the validity of the signatures belonging to the nine republican candidates. The CBOE commissioners denied ballot access to all nine republican candidates for the very same reason: insufficient number of valid signatures.

Republican Signature Statistics¹

The fact that the CBOE denied all nine republican candidates ballot access is highly suspicious. The CBOE invalidating 72% of the nine republican candidates’ signatures warrants a criminal investigation. One or two republicans with 72% invalid signatures would be a startling statistic. The 72% invalid signature average for all nine republican candidates means the CBOE was biased in favor of the democrats and prejudiced against the republicans.

The CBOE preventing non-machine candidates’ names from appearing on the ballot has been going on for years. Sixteen years ago Barack Obama ran unopposed for the Illinois state senate because the CBOE invalidated 62% of Obama’s four opponents’ signatures.

The Democratic Controlled State Legislature and the CBOE are in Cahoots

The CBOE commissioners, the circuit court judges who appointed the three CBOE commissioners, the City of Chicago executive branch who hired CBOE employees, and democratic state legislators are all important parts of the Chicago machine. Each facet of the Chicago machine played a role in denying the republican candidates ballot access.

The Illinois state legislature wrot