After exhausting his chances in court, an independent candidate for Congress is dropping out, but his bid still has the potential to change Illinois elections in the future.
Bloomington Doctor David Gill has been on the ballot before (four times, actually) and lost. As a Democrat.
He says he's always criticized the party ""in regards to their selling out, as it were, to corporate interests and Wall Street banks."
This cycle he tried again to run in the 13th district, but as an independent.
But getting on the ballot requires getting 10,754 voters' signatures, 15 times more than Republicans and Democrats.
"It's one thing to collect 740 signatures as the Democrat and the Republican are required to do, it's a whole other thing to do 15 times that. It was an extremely arduous, demanding process," Gill said.
Gill didn't quite get there.
He says the lopsided signature threshold is unconstitutional, and sued in federal court.
A U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough was willing to allow him on the ballot while battle played out in court. But an appeals panel disagreed. Gill then tried asking U.S. Supreme Court justices to intervene, but they declined.
Gill says with time out, he's ending his campaign.
But he's pressing forward with the lawsuit.
"Frankly I'm of the belief that, uh, the overall lawsuit is probably more important than me being on ballot in 2016," he said.
Gill previously ran for Congress multiple times, most recently losing in 2012 to Republican Rodney Davis of Taylorville.
