Today, @chicagotribune laid off five guild staff members in a roughly 10% cut to our newsroom. These layoffs underscore a sad but unsurprising failure of leadership by Alden Global Capital, our hedge fund owner, and local management.

The @chicagotribune is offering buyouts to our journalists. This move by Alden Global Capital, our rapacious ownership group, shows a total lack of vision and respect for the newsroom and the city we serve. We will do whatever we can to support our members. (1/4)

The @chicagotribune corruption series ends with a thorough story on how Illinois can address its problems: Corruption has burdened Illinois since its earliest days. But change is possible. Here’s how. By @joemahr and @RayLong

A middle-aged mom is seriously mentally ill and is arrested for a minor crime. The judge wants her in a mental hospital but there’s no space. She wastes away and dies in jail - a cost of IL falling short. Important work by @jrbullington:

(16/16) Final note of long 🧵: Thanks to subscribers for helping fund our work, and please check out full set of (continuing) articles in Culture of Corruption series here:

(15/16) So when you show up to vote, and see just one person running for a spot, that doesn’t mean nobody else wanted the gig. It may mean they didn’t survive this behind-the-scenes gauntlet. Again, the article:

(14/16) The irony? Those bright-eyed newcomers who want to make a fight status quo? They learn to mimic the ruthless tactics used against them. Worry less about convincing voters. Focus more on using arcane election law to kneecap opponents - before voters ever get a say.

(13/16) And for pols who do this? Their mantra is often: Don’t hate the player, hate the game. In fact, a lot of newcomers try to play the game too (often poorly, except for a guy named Obama who used it to launch his political career -🤔 if that makes the prez library).

(12/16) And side note: In this era of misinformation/ unwarranted suspicion of election workers, this article is NOT an indictment of them. From what I saw, election workers here are pros, doing their best in a thankless role state law forces them to do.

(11/16) Many newcomers may make the ballot (after paying $$ to lawyers), but the battle is so consuming - in time and $$ - that they can't do the thing upstarts really need to do to win against a powerful incumbent: campaign.

(10/16) It becomes a game of math: knock down a rival’s signature count ⬇️ minimum needed to qualify. The powerful/ savvy turn in far more signatures than minimum, knowing a bunch may get knocked off but they’ve got legal muscle to survive. Of course, newcomers may not.

(9/16) Heck, you can even sign an affidavit that it's REALLY your signature on the petition (the whole bit, where you show your ID to a notary + all the legal mumbo jumbo) and STILL get your signature tossed because of how the rules interpret what's legit and what's not. 🤔

(8/16) If somebody thrusts a clipboard at you, you may do a quick scribble and go about your day. It’s not like you’re signing your will. But if that swoosh of your S is just off from what's on file at elections office, all of a sudden your sig is not "genuine" & it's tossed.

(7/16) Sure, forgeries do happen. (Again, this is IL.) But what we found is the petition challenge process tends to toss legit signatures. Why? Typically, people’s signatures don’t always align over time/ situations/ etc. Let me explain…

(6/16) Perhaps the most controversial challenge: Somebody’s petition signature isn’t "genuine." In some places, those would be fighting words/ felony forgery. In IL? For ballot challenges? The allegation is tossed around so much - thousands of times a cycle - that it’s a yawner.

(5/16) There’s some validity to process. You don’t want people faking their way onto ballot. (This IS Illinois sigh.) But other states let election workers do the vetting in-house, to weed out fraudsters. In IL, pols file challenges to force rivals into elaborate trials of sorts.

(4/16) The bigger woes can come after you turn in your paperwork. Your rivals (or proxies/ or hired guns) go through your paperwork, to nitpick anything that maybe, kind of, might be not 100% in line with IL's complicated rules. They file a challenge, launching exhaustive review.

(3/16) You wanna run for office? The first hurdle: You (or allies) schlep around to get people to sign a petition saying they think you should be on the ballot. It takes a LOT of signatures to qualify in IL (advantage: powerful incumbents/ people with $ to hire sig gatherers).

(2/16) @chicagotribune has set out this year to figure out why IL has had so many corrupt politicians. One reason we heard: The system set up by pols makes it easy for incumbents/ powerful to control the ballot - icing out newcomers who may challenge the status quo.

You ever wonder why there’s so few choices when you go to vote in IL? Or people you never heard of? This article may explain it (+🧵if you're game - of which this is 1/16):