It would hardly be an election in Illinois if one side or the other didn't try to put a thumb on the scale.

Politics is an insiders' game in Illinois, and if our history shows anything it's that the insiders will go a long way to keep others from playing on their turf.

That's why they game the rules.

State election laws are grossly unfair to candidates who run as independents or as representatives of third parties. Democrats and Republicans don't want the competition, so they restrict ballot access.

Illinois has a March primary date, rather than June or July, that was selected to discourage turnout by requiring voters to turn out in iffy, often-cold weather.

Our legislators have front-loaded the process to ensure that a public galvanized by events can't take quick action to seek change at the polls. Candidates for public office recently started distributing nominating petitions - the filing period is Nov. 28 through Dec. 5 (an earlier version had the wrong filing date information) - for a general election that won't be held until November 2012.

What's the rush? No rush — it's just the politics-as-usual crowd writing rules that reinforce the status quo.

Considered in that light, suspicion naturally falls on a new state law that changes the rules regarding the number of voter signatures that candidates can file in their nominating petitions.

Here's one example — a candidate for the Illinois House must file petitions with at least 500 valid signatures but now is barred from filing petitions with more than 1,500 signatures. State Senate candidate petitions must bear at least 1,000 valid signatures but not more than 3,000 signatures.

The good government explanation is that this change in policy is intended to make life easier for county clerks dealing with petition challenges. But there's an alternative and more sinister explanation for the change — it will make it easier to challenge candidate petitions.

Over the years, petition challenges have become a favored technique of political leaders trying to win an election well before the first ballot is cast. Knocking your opponent off the ballot is easier and cheaper than winning an election. The courts have been complicit in this exercise by adopting a stringent standard of candidate compliance on petition rules, although a recent appellate court decision involving a candidate challenge in a Champaign County Board race considerably eased the rules.

But the number of valid voter signatures often is an issue, particularly so this year when reapportionment has spread widespread confusion about the House and Senate districts in which voters reside.

To get around challenges to their voter petitions, many candidates collect far more signatures than they need. For starters, it's intended to demonstrate public support. More important, the extra signatures provide a margin for error if some voter signatures are challenged and found wanting.

But for every move, there is a countermove. To prevent the filing of extra signatures, legislators passed a law limiting how many extra signatures a candidate can file.

This is real inside baseball, the kind of thing average voters never think about.

But professional politicians have made a science of this kind of gamesmanship, and they write the rules to give them an advantage. This change in the law has little, if anything, to do with improving the democratic process, But it has much to do with attempting to restrict ballot access by making it easier for one candidate to challenge an opponent's petitions.