Chicago holds its nonpartisan city elections on February 24, 2015. Voters elect three citywide offices: Mayor, City Clerk, and Treasurer. For the latter two offices, only one candidate will be listed on the ballot. Candidates for the citywide offices need 12,500 valid signatures, and that is so severe, there is very little competition for the two lesser offices. Two candidates for city clerk filed petitions, but one candidate’s petition was challenged and the challenger prevailed.

Here is the long list of candidates for Alderman who were challenged, and what the results of each challenge were. The document contains 16 pages. There are races for Alderman in 50 districts. Not all of the challenges have been adjudicated yet. At this point it is not known how many candidates will be on for Mayor.

According to this news story, it seems likely the Illinois legislature is likely to pass a bill providing for a special election for State Comptroller in 2016. Normally that office is up in midterm years and has a four-year term. Judy Baar Topinka was re-elected State Comptroller in November 2014 but then she died before the new term started.

The Associated Press has this story, saying the Minnesota Secretary of State has formally notified the Independence Party that it has lost its qualified status, something it has enjoyed for twenty years. The party needed to poll 5% for one of the statewide offices. The party was very unlucky, polling only 4.9% for Secretary of State. Its other statewide results were: Governor-Lieutenant Governor 2.9%; U.S. Senator 2.4%; Auditor 4.0%; Attorney General 2.3%.

The party is free to ask the legislature to ease the 5% vote test. The median vote test in the 50 states is 2%.