A slate of four candidates to be Hillary Clinton delegates to the Democratic National Convention from the 18th Congressional District apparently did not meet the threshold of valid signatures on their nominating petitions.

But if they do lose their place on the ballot, they or other delegates Clinton earns by her showing in the March 15 primary could still be named before the convention in July in Philadelphia.

“The bottom line is that if any campaign fails to (have) a full slate of delegates ... there’s a mechanism for having delegates appointed, so that candidate does not lose votes on the floor of the convention,” said Chris Dunn of Wilmette, a Clinton volunteer who helped organize the Clinton delegate petition effort statewide.

Slates of Democratic delegates in each of the 18 congressional districts in Illinois need 500 valid signatures to get on the primary ballot. In the 18th, 520 signatures were filed for the slate of four candidates for Clinton, but 17 of those signatures, on three of the 57 petition pages filed, listed delegate candidates in the 13th Congressional District, not the 18th. That would bring the number filed for the candidates in the 18th to 503.

Election records in Peoria and Bloomington show that at least six other people who signed the petitions for the 18th District candidates live in either the 13th or 17th congressional districts, indicating that those signatures, if singled out in an objection, would be disallowed. That would drop the total of valid signatures below 500.

Those names emerged from research done by former Democratic state Rep. Bill Edley of Springfield, who reviewed the petitions.

As of Monday afternoon, no objection had been filed to the slate of former Secretary of State Clinton, the national frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. If there is no objection, the candidates will remain on the ballot. Objections can be filed through 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The delegate slate includes Bill Houlihan of Springfield and Shirley McCombs of Petersburg, both members of the Democratic State Central Committee; Charles Good Jr., a Democratic precinct committeeman from Gardner Township; and Patsy Henderson Bowles of Bloomington.

In addition to voting for delegates, Democrats who go to the polls in the primary will also vote in the statewide presidential preference election. Under Democratic Party of Illinois rules, delegates in each congressional district will be allocated in proportion to how the presidential preference vote goes in that district.

Outside of Cook County, that procedure would involve a meeting in the congressional district, with precinct committeemen voting for delegates.

Edley, the former state representative, said he came across the questionable paperwork in the 18th as he was looking over various petitions because of his interest in the party’s delegate selection process. He backs U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president, but said he’s not part of the Sanders campaign and did not plan to file an objection to the Clinton delegate petitions.

“Personally, I am not interested in knocking their delegates off the ballot,” Edley said, “but obviously, Clinton’s campaign doesn’t believe it should play by the rules everybody else must meet for ballot access and integrity. The arrogance is typical Clinton campaign.”

He said candidates often turn in twice the number of signatures needed to make sure enough valid signatures will remain in the event of an objection.

“Why would you file such a small amount when it’s well known that you have to file significantly over the minimum in order to ensure that your petitions are valid,” Edley added. “It shows a lack of interest from somebody, from the Clinton campaign.”

Not so, Dunn said. In all, about 17,000 signatures were filed for Clinton delegate slates across the state, he said, noting that the campaign also filed nearly the 5,000-signature limit for Clinton for the statewide preference vote, and those were selected from about 17,000 collected across Illinois.

“I think that’s a pretty good example of how much respect we have for this process,” Dunn said.

He said petitions were assembled at his home, and he noted that the 13th and 18th each have parts of Springfield and Bloomington-Normal.

“We tried just as hard as we can not to make mistakes,” he said. “Clearly, three pieces of paper were inadvertently included in the 18th District package.”

He also noted that Clinton’s petitions were filed as doors opened at the State Board of Elections on Jan. 4, beginning the three-day filing period.

“We didn’t have to file the 18th that (first) day, but our assumption was we had a sufficient number, though not as many as we would have liked in that district,” Dunn said. “So we made the decision to file.”