Petitions

How to Check Your Own Petition Before You File

The best time to find a problem in your petition is before anyone else can. A self-audit means reading every sheet the way an objector would: first the parts that can sink a whole sheet (the heading, the circulator statement and the notary), then each signer line, then the count and the assembly. Set aside a few quiet days before filing opens, work through the checklist below, and leave yourself time to go back out for replacement signatures if your honest count comes up short.

Once you file, the petition "cannot be modified, altered, or added to in any way" (2027 Candidate's Guide p. 19). For 2027 that means finishing this review before October 19 to 26, 2026 on the February 23 track, or before November 16 to 23, 2026 on the April 6 track. For the bigger picture of petitions, signature numbers and the calendar, see our guide to Illinois nominating petitions.

What you need

• Every completed sheet, from every circulator, in one place.
• Your exact signature minimum, and any maximum, confirmed with your election authority.
• The voter list you circulated from, or another way to check registrations (your county clerk or county party can tell you what is available).
• Three colored pens or sticky flags: one for "strong," one for "doubtful," one for "remove."
• A tally sheet with a row per petition sheet.

Work with a second person if you can. Two readers catch what one misses, and an objector will have fresh eyes.

Step 1: Check each sheet's heading

A problem in the heading affects every line beneath it, so check these first. For every sheet:

• ☐ The heading names the election, your name, the office, your party (if partisan) and your residence (Guide p. 19).
• ☐ It is identical on every sheet (10 ILCS 5/10-4).
• ☐ It was filled in before the sheet went out. If a circulator tells you they filled it in after collecting signatures, set that sheet aside and ask your election authority or an attorney before relying on it.
• ☐ Your name matches your Statement of Candidacy and any Loyalty Oath you will file, character for character, with no titles or slogans (Guide pp. 19 to 20).
• ☐ The sheet is an original, the same size as the others (Guide p. 19).

Step 2: Check each circulator's statement and notary

The circulator statement vouches for every signature on its sheet. A defect here can cost you the whole page. For every sheet:

• ☐ The statement is signed by one person, the person who circulated the sheet (Guide p. 21).
• ☐ It gives the circulator's current address (Guide p. 66).
• ☐ It certifies age and U.S. citizenship. The circulator must be 18, or 18 by the date of the consolidated election (Guide p. 21).
• ☐ It gives the circulation dates in one of the accepted forms: the dates circulated, the first and last dates, or a certification that nothing was gathered more than 90 days before the last filing day (Guide p. 21; 10 ILCS 5/10-4).
• ☐ Those dates fall inside your track's window: on or after July 28, 2026 for the February track, or August 25, 2026 for the April track.
• ☐ The notary section is complete and signed (Guide p. 21).
• ☐ The notary is not a signer on that sheet, since ISBE suggests a cautious candidate avoid that (Guide p. 67).
• ☐ The circulator has not circulated for candidates of another established party, or for an independent or new-party candidate as well as a party (10 ILCS 5/10-4; Guide p. 21).

Ask each circulator directly whether anyone else ever carried their sheets. "The circulator must personally witness all signatures given" (Guide p. 21), and a sheet cannot be circulated by more than one person (Guide p. 67).

Step 3: Check every signer line

Now go line by line. Flag each one strong, doubtful or remove.

• ☐ Signed by the voter personally. Watch for two lines in the same handwriting, especially from the same address. Nobody may sign for a spouse or other household member (Guide p. 21).
• ☐ Full address. Street address or rural route, plus city, village or town, county and state, which may be pre-printed if every signer on the sheet lives there (Guide p. 22). No P.O. boxes outside narrow exceptions (Guide p. 65).
• ☐ Inside your district. Check any address near the boundary, any street name you do not recognize and any apartment building that might straddle a line.
• ☐ Registered at that address. The signer must be a registered voter at the address shown (Guide pp. 21 to 22). Compare the line against your voter list. Mark lines you cannot match as doubtful rather than assuming.
• ☐ Legible. If you cannot read it with the voter list in front of you, neither can an objector.
• ☐ Eligible for this petition. On a party primary petition, the signer should be a primary elector of your party and not have signed another party's petitions for this primary (10 ILCS 5/7-10). On an independent petition, a voter may subscribe to only one nomination for the office (10 ILCS 5/10-3).
• ☐ Not a duplicate. Sort or list every name and address across all circulators' sheets and look for repeats. Only one of any pair can count.
• ☐ Not withdrawn. If a voter asked in writing to have their name removed, it must come off before filing (Guide pp. 22, 67).

Ditto marks and pencil are not prohibited, but the Guide suggests avoiding ditto marks and using dark ink (Guide p. 65), so flag lines that rely on them as doubtful.

Step 4: Strike what you will not defend

You do not have to file a line you know is bad. If you strike signatures, follow the rule exactly (Guide pp. 22, 67; 10 ILCS 5/7-10, 10-3):

1. Only the circulator of that sheet or the candidate may strike a line.
2. Initial at the strike.
3. List every struck line by page and line on a Certificate of Deletions (SBE Form P-2A). Independent candidates also file Form P-2B.
4. Put the certificate in your filing packet (Guide p. 15).

Strike conservatively. A doubtful line may still be valid, and an unneeded strike only shrinks your margin.

Step 5: Count honestly

Fill in your tally sheet with three numbers per page: strong, doubtful and struck. Then add up the strong lines only.

• If strong lines alone clear your minimum with a real cushion, you are in good shape. There is no legal rule for the size of that cushion; many campaigns aim for 1.5 to 2 times the minimum as common practice. Our post on how many signatures to collect above the minimum helps you size it for your race.
• If strong lines are close to the minimum, keep collecting before filing closes.
• If your office has a maximum, as ward and township committeeperson and independent petitions do, make sure your total does not exceed it, and ask your election authority how they count against it.

Step 6: Replace weak lines from your door records

If the count is thin, the fastest replacements come from doors you have already been to: households where nobody was home, or where someone asked you to come back. They are inside your district and you know where they are.

Here is where your canvassing records do the work. In Beacon, every door your circulators visited carries a result: contacted, not home, refused, moved, come back later and the rest, plus the answer to any survey question you set up, such as "Signed petition: yes / no." Use those results to pick the streets with the most unreached households, assign them as territories to your most careful circulators, and send them out on optimized routes. The app works offline and syncs when the phone has signal again, so a late push into apartment buildings does not lose data. Beacon tracks the walking; the signature still goes on the paper sheet, which you then audit like the others.

A "moved" result from petition season is also a useful flag during the audit. If a line on your sheets comes from an address your canvasser marked as moved, look closely at whether that signer is still registered there.

Step 7: Assemble and do a final pass

When the count is right:

• ☐ Remove any sheets you decided not to file.
• ☐ Number the remaining sheets consecutively, starting with "1" on top (Guide p. 19).
• ☐ Fasten them in book form along one edge. Paper clips and clipboards are not secure fastening (Guide p. 19).
• ☐ Put your notarized Statement of Candidacy at the front, and include the Certificate of Deletions if you struck anything (Guide pp. 15, 19).
• ☐ Confirm your SEI receipt will reach the filing office by 5:00 p.m. on the last filing day (Guide p. 23).
• ☐ Copy the entire packet and keep the copy with your tally sheet.

Your tally sheet is worth keeping. If an objection is filed, you will already know which lines you expected to be questioned. Our post on filing day and the ballot lottery covers what happens next.

Start the next petition with better records

Every campaign that does a careful audit learns where its sheets went wrong, and most of it traces back to which doors were knocked and by whom. Our page on canvassing software for political campaigns shows how candidates organize that from the start. To give your circulators routed walk lists and a door-by-door record you can audit against, start a 14-day Beacon trial, with unlimited canvassers on every plan.