John Howard Kuk, right, sits during a hearing Monday at the McLean County Law Center. Outgoing Unit 5 board member, Mark Pritchett, left, filed the objection. (Joe Ragusa/WJBC)
By Joe Ragusa
BLOOMINGTON – A man running for the Unit 5 school board will remain on the April ballot despite an objection to his nominating petitions.
The McLean County Officers Electoral Board ruled in favor of John Howard Kuk Monday, despite the fact he used form SBE No. P-7A instead of SBE No. P-7 to collect signatures in support of his nomination.
"The process changed this year," Kuk said. "The spirit of the petition, its not supposed to be this laborious process. Even this, right now, is a little bit more than I expected.
The Electoral Board did have an issue with one page of petitions that was thrown out, since the circulator's name didn't match with the circulator's signature. That didn't matter, since Kuk had more than 50 signatures without that page.
Mark Pritchett, a current Unit 5 board member who decided not to run again, objected to Kuk's petitions. Pritchett said during the hearing that the objection was nothing personal, he just wanted to make sure every candidate abided by the same rules.
Six candidates total are running to fill 4 four-year terms: Kuk, Glenn Block, James E. Hayek Jr., Barry Hitchins, Denise L. Schuster and Michael E. Trask.
Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].
