Now that Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon has certified the April 1 election results, the lucky candidates who prevailed on Election Day can start taking their oaths of office.
Most of those candidates were on the ballot having gone through the traditional route of obtaining signatures and filing for office.
In many races on April 1, being on the ballot was all a candidate had to do to win election.
There were still other races which didn’t even have enough candidates to fill all of the seats.
This is where the write-in vote comes into play.
An interesting aspect of elections is the write-in vote. It used to be that voters would write in the name of someone not on the ballot. Jokers would write in the name of characters like Mickey Mouse. There were some serious write-in campaigns that sometimes worked but mostly didn’t.
Some years ago, Illinois required serious write-in candidates to file a declaration with the appropriate County Clerk that they were indeed running. Otherwise, any votes for them would not be counted.
Last week, when Gordon announced that the results were officially certified, she also announced the write-in totals for suburban races.
For example, Alicia Snow received 130 write-in votes in the race for mayor in Lyons. It didn’t matter, as incumbent Chris Getty rolled to an easy win with 1,048 votes.
In Summit, Jose Tony Cervantes picked up two write-in votes in the race for the Summit Park District Board of Commissioners. Assuming he voted for himself, Tony has at least one good friend.
Write-in candidates can win, which was the case in LaGrange Highlands School District 106 where only three candidates ran for four seats. So, Aquila Lykouretzos won a four-year seat on the school board with 76 votes.
That was also how Bryant Evans was elected to the Oak Lawn-Hometown School District 123 board and Oneal Gray won a seat on the Evergreen Park School District 124 school board.
Andrea Zumhagen used the write-in route to win a six-year seat on the Oak Lawn Park Board over two other write-in candidates, Steve Loulousis and Celena Russ.
In Oak Lawn, perennial candidate Ken Yerkes was elected to the Oak Lawn Community High School Board of Education with 339 write-in votes outpolling Benjamin Bush and Anas Khraiwish, who also ran write-in campaigns.
Also in Oak Lawn, Catherine O’Shea, another resident who has unsuccessfully run for office before, ran for mayor and received 303 votes. It wasn’t close, as incumbent mayor Terry R. Vorderer garnered 3,494 votes.
Another event that can happen now that the results have been certified is the reorganization of the various school boards, park boards and other elected boards that serve selflessly – that means without pay. The new members will meet and elect a president, secretary and sometimes additional officers.
One such reorganization took place last week when the newly sworn in Argo High School Board of Education met on April 23 and replaced longtime school board president Dan Kozel with Jennifer Grenier. This might have been fallout from the ongoing mess involving questionable charges on a district credit card by former Superintendent William Toulios.
Bob Bong is editor of Southwest Regional Publishing