CHICAGO - The Illinois Libertarian Party candidates will be on the November 2014 ballot, the State Board of Elections Board decided Friday.

"We're certified and we're on the ballot," Brian Lambrecht of the DuPage County Libertarians told Illinois Review shortly after leaving the hearing in Chicago.

"The Republicans did everything they could to discredit the petition signatures to get us from the 46,000 signatures we gathered to below the required 25,000 signature threshold, but they failed," Lambrecht said.

In addition to volunteer petitioners like Lambrecht, several professional petitioners had been hired by the Libertarian Party to gather petition signatures. Republican operatives worked especially hard to discredit those that had gathered 2000 or more, he said.

"These people gather petitions for a living, so their livelihood was threatened by armed guards coming to their homes and demanding that they sign an affadavit admitting they had committed fraud," Lambrecht told Illinois Review. "These people fought for their jobs and their reputations by testifying at several Board of Election hearings over a two week period of time."

----- See IR story: "Illinois Petition Politics: Signatures, Courts and Armed Investigators" -----

"The tactics the IL GOP used really hurt them in the long run," Lambrecht said.