In less than two months, candidates planning to run in next April’s consolidated election — those hoping to become aldermen, trustees and township officials — will take out petitions and begin their efforts to get on the ballot.

These are the people who will make the critical decisions that affect our daily lives — how much we pay in local taxes, how good our roads are and how vibrant our communities are.

In a perfect world, we’d have a ballot filled with dedicated people eager to serve.

What’s more likely to happen is that at least some of those people will be removed from the ballot, not because they were ineligible or because fraud occurred.

They may be removed because of a missing staple, a wrong date, a misplaced address or another technical defect that causes no real harm — except to limit whom voters get to consider and cost local communities thousands of dollars.

State lawmakers know this is a problem. Yet the 177 state representatives and senators in Springfield just completed another legislative session without doing anything meaningful to protect voters, candidates or taxpayers from a broken election objection process. Madison County already saw multiple candidates removed from the 2025 ballot over unstapled petitions, and taxpayers in Worden were forced to pay more than $19,000 because of a simple clerical mistake.

Illinois law requires candidates to follow specific rules when filing nominating petitions. Those rules matter, and election officials need clear standards to determine who qualifies for the ballot.

But election law should protect voters, not create traps that can be weaponized against candidates over mistakes that do not affect eligibility, invalidate signatures or deceive the public.

Illinois has allowed that distinction to collapse, creating a system in which candidates can collect the signatures they need and still lose their place on the ballot before voters ever have a say.

Candidates have a responsibility to follow the law, and petition requirements exist for a reason.

But no community should have to spend thousands of dollars over a harmless filing mistake that does not affect a candidate’s eligibility or voters’ signatures.

A law can be followed as written and produce an outcome that undermines the democratic process it is supposed to protect. When that happens, lawmakers have a responsibility to fix the law.

They failed, and now the threat of technical objections remains as we move into yet another election cycle.

Worden was the clearest local warning sign, but it was not the only one.

Ahead of this year’s primary election, a Madison County clerk candidate faced an objection after writing the wrong year on her petitions. She narrowly survived the challenge. A U.S. Senate candidate was removed from the ballot after submitting thousands of signatures because his petitions listed a campaign headquarters address rather than his residence. In total, objections were filed against 116 of the 643 candidates who filed to run for offices handled by the State Board of Elections, and even more filed with county clerks across the state.

That is why lawmakers need to act. The objection process has become too easy to use to limit who voters get to consider.

Election objections should have a legitimate purpose. They should not be available to let political opponents or private citizens knock candidates off the ballot over minor clerical errors that do not change who signed, whether the signatures are valid or whether the candidate is legally qualified to serve.

The fix is straightforward — limit objections to issues that actually affect eligibility, signature validity, fraud, voter confusion or demonstrable harm, and remove the option to challenge clerical mistakes.

That would strengthen our elections. It would preserve legitimate challenges to ineligible candidates and fraudulent signatures while preventing the process from being abused to eliminate competition. It would protect taxpayers in communities like Worden and ensure voters decide who represents them.

That’s what makes Springfield’s inaction so frustrating.

Lawmakers found time this session for the usual partisan fights and symbolic debates, including what Illinois’ official state sandwich should be. But they did not find time to fix an election-law flaw that has cost local taxpayers money and threatened voters’ choices.

That is a major failure of priorities by lawmakers in both parties.

So, in just a few weeks, we’ll have candidates hoping to bring new ideas and energy to their communities beginning their campaigns. They’ll be at festivals, grocery stores, public meetings, neighborhood events and front doors. Some will be first-time candidates. All will be running for offices where campaigns are built on shoe leather and personal relationships, not paid staff or election lawyers.

And because of the inaction of our lawmakers in Springfield, they will once again have to fear that one harmless mistake will erase months of work, nullify the signatures they collected, and cost their community thousands of dollars.

Now lawmakers have gone home for the summer, and many will spend the next several months focused on their own re-election campaigns. No state lawmaker running for re-election should be allowed to avoid the question: Will they support reasonable changes to Illinois’ election law when the General Assembly returns in November for veto session?

Because in Illinois, elections should be decided by voters — not by whoever finds the best technicality.

Jason Koch is the editor of The Edwardsville Intelligencer. He can be reached at Jason.Koch@hearst.com.