[LPIL - Board of Directors] Update and Farewell

[Steve Suess]

Hello everyone,

This will be my last email from chair at lpillinois.org. I wanted to address
two things.

First, many of you have probably heard that our Secretary of State
candidate Jesse White withdrew from the race before the signature
inspections began yesterday. While we can't say much about how this
decision was made, here's what I am able to tell you. We made this decision
for three primary reasons...

1) It became apparent there was a high likelihood that we would lose the
objection. This was the gut feeling from our attorney and others close to
the process. I want to be absolutely clear - We had enough valid signatures
as required by law. Unfortunately, the objection process is politicized,
and we were going up against the largest, most well-funded political
machine in the state. I won't talk about specifics regarding *why *we
thought we would lose. Those details may come out when we know what we can
and cannot say. With a high likelihood that we would lose and facing the
possibility of spending thousands of dollars to continue, we decided to
pull the plug.

2) It's the opinion of our legal counsel that Jesse achieving 5% would not
get us statewide ballot access. Illinois election law is vague and
contradictory (purposefully). Again, I'll spare you the dirty details and
legal arguments (although I'd love to have that conversation with you if
you'd like to have it), but our lawyer believes only our Governor candidate
can achieve statewide ballot access. While this is not the only
interpretation of the law, it is consistent with the language in law. With
the possibility of spending thousands of dollars defending signatures for a
candidate who possibly wouldn't even get us ballot access, we decided it
was not a worthwhile endeavor.

3) Jesse's withdrawal allows us to appoint a new candidate if we would like
to. That will be the responsibility of the new board to consider.

There may be more details we can release later, but that's what I can tell
you right now. Chase, Matt, Russ, Brett, and the rest of the new Board will
be in touch with details as they become available.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone for their help and support in my term
as Chair. It was not always easy, but each of you helped lessen the burden
and made it more enjoyable. You can still reach me via email at
stevesuess at gmail.com. I'm happy to help where I can. I'm not going anywhere
- I was just elected the Chair of the McLean County Libertarian Party last
night at our county convention.

See you soon,

Steve


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Steve Suess

Chair, Libertarian Party of Illinois
815 483 4043
chair at lpillinois.org
www.lpillinois.org
PO Box 3611, Bloomington, IL 61702

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