SPRING BAY — Weeks before a ballot is cast, the village is making Illinois election history.

And, depending on the vote in an unusual local race, Spring Bay could take further steps into first-ever territory.

The momentous scenario for April 2 actually seems routinely simple. For village president, two candidates are on the ballot:

* I talked to one. He is a political newcomer. And he is enthused.

* I couldn’t talk to the other. He is a political veteran. And he is dead.

John McCarty, 77, died unexpectedly last month, but his name remains on the ballot. After his decades-long service as village president, his family is campaigning hard to bring him a final victory.

“I feel that it’s something to do for him,” says Angela Angle, 56, one four sisters promoting his candidacy.

Meanwhile, Dave Tilley, who is making his first run for office, didn’t expect to go up against a dead man.

“It’s pretty strange,” says Tilley, 51.

Spring Bay and its 452 residents hug the Illinois River in western Woodford County. The village, which claims a precious handful of businesses, is surrounded by large stretches of farm fields.

It’s also more political than most burgs, pitting the People’s Party vs. the Citizen’s Party. Its board meeting are known for occasional brouhahas.

Over most of the past four decades, the head of that board usually has been McCarty. His working career included 30 years as a tool grinder for Caterpillar Inc., while he also filled multiple political and civic roles in and around Spring Bay. As supporters will tell you, as village president he obtained grants, helped build parks and assisted in flood relief, the latter often a problem in the spring.

In the last election, in 2015, McCarty ran unopposed. But this time, Tilley decided to toss his hat in the ring.

A longtime resident of nearby Germantown Hills and a graduate of Metamora Township High School, he moved to Spring Bay with his wife four years ago. Tilley is a nurse at OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, combat medic with the Illinois Army National Guard in Bartonville and volunteer EMT with Spring Bay Village Fire Department.

He eyes improvements to Spring Bay, such as new sidewalks and cleaned-up yards. He pushes fresh ideas (building a disc-golf course) while embracing tradition (reviving the watermelon festival).

“The town seems stagnant,” he says. “ ... I think I can help.”

Early this year, the village president election seemed straightforward: the incumbent with the People’s Party vs. the newcomer with the Citizen’s Party. But on Valentine’s Day, McCarty died unexpectedly.

However, the ballots already had been printed in Eureka, featuring both names.

Tilley says, “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Neither did McCarty’s family. But daughter Angle did a little research and found out that he could still win, even in death.

How can that be?

Says Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, “There is no provision in the election code with guidelines for this situation.”

Further, he says, this sort of scenario — a dead man running for office, all the way to election day — has never happened in Illinois. So, there is no precedent.

Dietrich says Tilley could go to court, explain the election-code silence on the matter and ask a judge to decide whether to keep McCarty on the ballot. That sort of judicial option might make sense if this situation were playing out in Chicago or Peoria, where big-bucks parties and candidates easily could pick up the legal tab. But that’s not the case in Spring Bay.

Besides, Tilley says he won’t go to court on this. “I’ll accept the results of the election,” he says.

Meanwhile, the State Board of Elections doesn’t oversee elections; in this case, it can only offer information regarding the election code. The process legally is in the hands of County Clerk Dawn Kupfer, who has been in that role since December.

Kupfer, who has been feverishly looking over state laws and codes, says that if McCarty wins, the village board will select a replacement as village president. That person could be anyone in the village.

There’s only one way the election still could be altered, Kupfer says. New ballots could be printed for Spring Bay, but only if she were to receive a formal request to withdraw McCarty’s name. And, by law, that request could come only from someone who can produce a death certificate — essentially, McCarty’s family.

Withdrawal? That’s exactly the opposite of what the family wants. Daughter Angle has been campaigning for her father, something she’d never done in any of his previous races.

“Actually,” she says with a chuckle, “I don’t recall my dad doing much campaigning.”

Aside from handing out fliers, she and her sisters created a newspaper-like promotion for Facebook. The front-page of The Spring Bay Times (which doesn’t actually exist) features a banner headline, “Vote for Mayor John.” The text below extols his accomplishments, along with explaining the process to replace him, should he win.

However, the ersatz newspaper doesn’t specifically note that McCarty is dead. Though Angle says most people in town know about his death, Tilley says a casual reader could infer that McCarty is still alive.

“It does look like that,” Tilley says.

Still, though puzzled over the campaign, he didn’t besmirch the family.

“John served the village for a long time,” Tilley says. “If that’s the way they want to honor him, that’s their choice.”

Though Angle admits that the effort sprang first from kinship — “It’d be nice for him to win one more time” — there is a political aspect involved. Though she says she knows nothing about Tilley, a victory for her father could bring a like-minded replacement, if his People’s Party were to win a board majority.

Plus, Angle says, voters deserve to be able to pick between more than just one candidate.

“I like a fair fight if I’m voting,” she says. “I like choices.”

But Tilley says the suggestion of choice is misleading in this atypical race. A vote for McCarty is wild-card, as there’s no way to know who (or what party) would be installed as village president.

“Usually, you want to vote for a (specific) candidate,” he says. “You’d be voting for the board to make a replacement. It could be anybody.”

But at least there’s one issue on which Tilley and Angle agree regarding the election. As she says, “It’s really interesting.”

PHIL LUCIANO is a Journal Star columnist. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, facebook.com/philluciano and (309) 686-3155. Follow him on Twitter.com/LucianoPhil.