Erik Moe Art & Design

Who knew a few lines on the local aldermanic election would be this blog’s hottest topic?

Naturally, I’ll follow up with more on the 46th as time permits. Meanwhile, over the weekend I stumbled upon VoicesRising’s sad post on the state of democracy in the city of big shoulders. Paperwork technicalities have thrown three challengers off the ballot in the neighboring 48th district (which covers the area just north of me, my bank, my coffeeshop, my middle-eastern deli, my Belgian tavern, and my Swedish smorgasbord shop). The author was involved in the campaign of progressive candidate Christopher Persons, who has a full rundown of the developing situation on his campaign site. This is apparently a citywide problem. As many as 192 of the 245 candidates for alderman may be tossed off ballots based on obscure technicalities.