delivered the opinion of the court:
The petition for nomination of Raymond K. Berg was filed on December 20, 1971, bearing signatures well in excess of the minimum required by statute. On December 27, 1971, plaintiff filed a timely objection to that petition, alleging the following as grounds for voiding the petition: (1) that the composition of the Electoral Board, the administrative body charged by statutе with the duty of hearing objections to nominating petitions, violated the provisions of the Election Code and lacked balanced political representation; 2) that numerous petition sheets contained forgeries and bore false affidavits by circulators; 3) that certain sheets were improperly notarized; and 4) that certain sheets were either circulated or signed as a direct result of political patronage pressures, contrary to the prohibitions of a recent federal court decision. Most of the objections incorporated attached exhibits, which sрecified petition pages on which particular violations were allegedly present. The objector sought to reserve the right to subsequently add to these specified page numbers by including the phrase, “and as may be supplemented hereafter,” after each exhibit’s designation. Following the enumerated objections, there was a request for the issuance of subpoenas pursuant to Section 10-10 of the Election Code. 1
The Electoral Board issued its call, setting December 31, 1971 as the hearing date for the objections. On December 28, 1971 plaintiff filed an action in Federal Court, seеking the production of certain records by the Cook County Clerk and the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. A consent order was entered in that proceeding on December 30, 1971, wherein it was agreed that those two offices would produce voter registration cards and the petition of Raymond K. Berg for inspection. The County Clerk and Board of Election Commissioners were to assemble the documents and deliver them to plaintiff no later than January 2, 1972. Plaintiff was to be allowed to inspect and copy the documents through January 4, 1972. This work began promptly and was in progress on December 31st, when the hearing before the Electoral Board commenced.
The full Electoral Board reconvened on January 5, 1972. Plaintiff renewed his motion for a continuance, asking for additional time to assimilate the data which had been produced and to facilitate the production of the 30%-40% of the voter registration cards which the Board of Elеction Commissioners had been unable to locate. Before ruling on the motion, the Chairman enumerated what he deemed to be 14 specific objections submitted by plaintiff and asked if plaintiff was prepared to proceed on any of them. He received a negative response to each of his 14 inquiries. Thereupon, the motion for a continuance was denied, and, without further comment by counsel, plaintiff’s entire objection was denied on the grounds that no evidence had been presented. A written decision followed on January 7, 1972, confirming the Electoral Board’s oral decision that the objections were overruled for failure to adduce evidence to sustain them.
On appeal, plaintiff makes two primary contentions: first, that the Circuit Court erred in limiting the scope of its review to the record of the Electoral Board proceedings and, second, that the denial of plaintiff’s requests for subpoenas аnd motion for a continuance constituted an abuse of discretion by the Electoral Board, which thereby prevented plaintiff from exercising his statutory right to challenge the nominating petition of the candidate. We shall address ourselves initially to plaintiff’s contention that a de novo hearing was obligatory in the Circuit Court.
OPINION
Prior to 1967 the Illinois Election Code provided that, “the decision of a majority of the electoral board shall be final.”
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This was interpreted by the courts to preclude judicial review of Electoral Board decisions, except upon the limited issue of whether a decision was clearly fraudulent. (Coles v. Holzman,
“A candidate or objector aggrieved by the decision of an electoral board may secure judicial review of such decision in the circuit court of the county in which the hearing of the electoral board was held # # #»
The statute, as amended, did not define the scope of review, and the Administrative Review Act was not made applicable. Plaintiff contends that this was a calculated omission reflecting a legislative intent to grant
“Where the statute which grants an appeal from an inferior court or administrative agency does not limit the scope or power of the reviewing court upon such appeal, the reviewing court hears it de novo as an original hearing.”
We have discovered further support for plaintiff’s theory. In City of Rockford v. Compton,
“The term appeal, in its original, technical and appropriate sense, meant the removal of a suit from an inferior court, after final judgment therein, to a superior court, and placing the case in the latter court to be again tried de novo upon its merits, just as though it had never been tried in the inferior court.”
The court held that, absent other statutory language suggesting a contrary intent by the legislature, the Circuit Court was bound by the traditional connotations of the word, “appeal,” and should have granted a de novo hearing. Both City of Rockford and Bankers Life are thus distinguishable from the case at bar, wherein the pertinent statute provides for “judicial review” instead of “appeal.” The two phrases are not synonymous, “judicial review” connoting a more limited scope of review than a hearing de novo. (South v. Railroad Retirement Board (N.D. Ga. 1942),
Plaintiff’s second contention is that the Electoral Board’s denial of plaintiff’s requests for subpoenas and his motion for continuance deprived him of any meaningful opportunity to present evidence in support of his objections, in violation of his constitutional right to Due Process of Law. We interpret plaintiff’s allegations as attributing error of constitutional proportions to each of the Electoral Board’s denials of subpoenas, to its denial of a continuance, and to tire overall dilemma in which the combination of these denials placed plaintiff. We will therefore examine the propriety of each of the contested procedural rulings and also comment on their cumulative effect upon plaintiff’s constitutional rights.
The scope of our review of the Electoral Board’s refusal to issue requested subpoenas is limited in two respects. First, in Illinois Crime Investigating Comm. v. Buccieri,
The first formal request for subpoenas occurred on January 3, 1972. Plaintiff sought the issuance of subpoenas duces tecum to the Chicago and Cook County Civil Service Commissions and to tire City of Chicago for the production of records, or copies thereof, relating to the employment of each of thе persons listed in Exhibit “E,” attached to the objection and purporting to reflect the names of the circulators of the Berg petition. Also sought were subpoenas duces tecum to the Democratic
On January 3rd, plaintiff explained to the Electoral Board tire theory of his “patronage” objections. He asserted that the entire circulating procedure, due to its reliance on political patronage employees and pressures, violated the rights of other candidates and necessitated the voiding of any petitions obtained by such means. Plaintiff cited, as support for this argument, the decision in Shakman v. Democratic Organization of Cook County (7th Cir. 1970),
“The interest in an equal chance and an equal voice is allegedly impaired in the case before us by the misuse of official pоwer over public employees so as to create a substantial, perhaps massive, political effort in favor of the ins and against the outs. We conclude that theseinterests are entitled to constitutional protection from injury of the nature alleged as well as from injury resulting from inequality in election procedure.”
By his argument, plaintiff has implied that an injunction is not the only remedy inherent in the “constitutional protection” alluded to by the Shakman opinion, but that an additional remedy is the use of the objection procedures of the Illinois Election Code 5 6 as a means of voiding primary petition signatures obtained directly through political patronage pressures. We do not concur in this assumption. The Cook County Electoral Board is a creature of statute, with adjudicatory powers limited by its enabling legislation. Section 10 — 10 of the Election Code delegates to the Electoral Board the following duties:
“* * * The electoral board shall take up the question as to whether or not the certificate of nomination or nomination papers are in proper form, and whether or not they were filed within the time and under the conditions required by law, and whether or not they are the genuine certificate of nomination or nomination papers which they purport to be, and whether or not in the case of the certificate of nomination in question it represents accurately the decision of the caucus or convention issuing it, and in general shall decide whether or not the certificate of nomination or nominating papers on file are valid or whether the objections thereto should be sustained and the decision of a majority of the electoral board shall be final subject to judicial review as provided in Section 10 — 10.1. The electoral bоard must state its findings in writing and must state in writing which objections, if any, it has sustained * #
We interpret this provision as limiting the Electoral Board’s scope of inquiry to the sole issue of whether a challenged nominating petition complies with the provisions of the Election Code pertaining thereto. Other provisions of the Election Code, particularly that delineating the composition of the Board
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and that requiring an expedited notice and hearing procedure,
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support the conclusion that our legislature did not intend the Electoral Board to entertain constitutional challenges to procedures еmployed in obtaining signatures for primary nominating petitions. We therefore hold that the objections to which plaintiff sought
The second request for subpoenas occurred on January 4, 1972. Plaintiff sought the issuance of subpoenas duces tecum to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners for the production of those voter registration cards which the Board of Election Commissioners had been unable to produce as of January 4th — between 5,000 and 10,000 cards. The Electoral Board, again by its Chairman, denied this request on the dual grounds that it constituted an attempt to delay the hearing scheduled for January 5th and that it sought to shift the burden of proof to the candidate. Without commenting as to the persuasiveness of these rationales, we again perceive no prejudice incurred by plaintiff as a result of this ruling. To the extent that plaintiff claims that a failure to respond to the subpoenas would have constituted evidence that the signature cards were nonexistent, and the corresponding petition signatures fraudulent, we observe that testimony by appropriate members of the Board of Election Commissioners could have established the same point. To the extent that plaintiff intended to introduce the requested cards in evidence, we observe that the Board of Election Commissioners was already obligated by a federal consent order to produce the cards and that the administrative subpoena would have been superfluous. Therefore, while we do not deny the relevancy or the reasonableness of the subpoena request, we hold that its denial did not constitute prejudicial error denying Due Process of Law.
The third request for subpoenas also occurred on January 4, 1972. Plaintiff sought the issuance of witness subpoenas for five circulators of Berg petition sheets. In support of this request, it was asserted that the sheets submitted by the five circulators contained false or fraudulent voter signatures. Plaintiff acknowledged, however, that Exhibit “A,” attached to the original objections and purporting to reflect those sheets containing false and fraudulent signatures, made no reference to the sheets submitted by the circulators sought to be subpoenaed. Under those circumstances, the Chairman ruled that the requested subpoenas were irrelevant to any objections properly before the Electoral Board at that time. Plaintiff did not subsequently seek to amend his objections. We conclude that this request for subpoenas was properly denied.
We hold that the Electoral Board did not commit reversible error in denying plaintiff’s subpoena requests. In upholding these three rulings, however, we in no way intend to imply the existence of unlimited discretion in the Electoral Board to deny the issuance of subpoenas. The Electoral Board bears the responsibility for determining
On January 4, 1972, plaintiff submitted to the Electoral Board a motion for a continuance. Plaintiff has strenuously contended that the denial of this motion in effect denied him an opportunity to present evidence to support his objections. The merits of the motion were argued primarily on January 4th, at which time plaintiff referred the Electorial Board to the federal court order of December 30, 1972, which had granted him access to voter registration cards in the possession of the Board оf Election Commissioners and had established a timetable for inspecting the cards. Plaintiff informed the Electoral Board that, as of January 4th, the Board of Election Commissioners had been unable to locate one-third of the cards and was behind schedule in producing the rest. No bad faith was alleged, the delay being attributed to the enormity of the task undertaken. A continuance until January 14, 1972, or any other reasonable date, was requested to allow the Board of Election Commissioners to complete their task and plaintiff to correlate, assimilate and organize his evidence for prеsentation. In opposition to the motion, counsel for the candidate asserted his client’s desire for a speedy disposition of the matter before the Electoral Board in order to ensure full appellate review prior to certain ballot deadlines. Counsel for the Board of Election Commissioners, also in opposition to the motion, argued that his client’s failure to comply with the federal court was due to plaintiff’s insistence on inefficient and time-consuming procedures. The motion was taken under advisement on January 4th. On January 5th the Electoral Board inquired whether plаintiff was prepared to present any evidence on any of his objections at that time. The response was negative. At that point, the motion for a continuance was denied.
Rule 3 of the Rules of Procedure adopted by the Electoral Board provided as follows: “There will be no continuance or resetting of the hearing on objections except for good cause shown.” It is our conclusion that plaintiff’s motion for a continuance was not supported before the Electoral Board by “good cause shown.” This conclusion in no way re-fleets
We hold that the proceedings before the Electoral Board did not deny plaintiff Due Process of Law. In view of the foregoing, we affirm.
Judgment affirmed.
SCHWARTZ and LEIGHTON, JJ., concur.
Notes
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10-10:
“* * * The electorаl board shall have the power to administer oaths and to subpoena and examine witnesses and at the request of either party the chairman may issue subpoenas requiring the attendance of witnesses and subpoenas duces tecum requiring the production of such books, papers, records and documents as may be evidence of any matter under inquiry before the electoral board, in the same manner as witnesses are subpoenaed in the Circuit Court
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10 — 10.1.
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1965, ch. 46, par. 10 — 10.
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10 — 10.1.
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10 — 8 et seq.
6 Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10 — 9(3):
“The county officers electoral board * * * shall be composed of an associate judge resident in the county, to be designated by the chief judge, the county clerk, and the State’s Attorney of the county, of whom the judge shall be the chairman.”
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 10 — 10.
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, par. 19 — 2.
Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 46, pars. 19 — 4 & 20 — 4.