Elk Grove Village’s spring village board election will be uncontested after trustee candidate Jacob Glimco was tossed from the ballot Monday for not having enough valid signatures on his nominating petitions.
The village electoral board — a rarely-constituted panel composed of Mayor Craig Johnson, Village Clerk Lorrie Murphy and Trustee Chris Prochno — formally invalidated three signatures and sustained one, during a hearing Monday afternoon on fellow first-time candidate Keith Lasken’s objection to Glimco’s nomination.
That left Glimco with only 187 valid signatures, seven short of the minimum 194 required.
After Lasken objected to the validity of at least a dozen names for not being a voter’s authentic signature, Glimco knocked on the doors of those voters Saturday morning with a notary public — but said no one was home.
He presented video statements from two voters who said they signed his petitions, but electoral board attorney Tiffany Nelson-Jaworski said that evidence was hearsay since the statements were not sworn or notarized via affidavits.
Joe Sagerer — the Elk Grove Township Elementary District 59 school board vice president — came to the hearing to testify that he saw those two voters sign Glimco’s papers. However, that testimony wasn’t allowed because Glimco did not alert the board, attorney and objector that he planned witnesses.
“You had a 48-hour disclosure deadline. Sorry,” Nelson-Jaworski said. “The reason for that is so that it’s fair for both sides. We’re not in a Matlock courtroom. We’re not on Court TV or anything like that. There’s typically not these Matlock-type surprises that occur in courtrooms. That’s the stuff of TV and that’s the stuff of movies. We have to proceed in an orderly fashion where both sides get a fair shake.”
Glimco said he didn’t know Sagerer, whose wife helped circulate Glimco’s petitions, was going to be there.
Glimco, who Johnson appointed to the zoning board of appeals in 2021, said he’s weighing whether to mount a write-in campaign, or run in two years.
Lasken, a product manager at Schaumburg-based Paylocity, will be on the ballot with incumbent trustees Jeff Franke, who has been on the board since 2007, and Joseph Bush, who was appointed by Johnson to fill a vacancy last year. Three, four-year trustee terms are up for election.
Johnson — who is Elk Grove’s longest-serving mayor — is uncontested in his bid for an unprecedented eighth term in office.