It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region,

and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

You know those people who've been standing outside supermarkets this time of year?

The one's trying to get you to sign a piece of paper.

That paper is called a petition,

and it's part of an application process to get on the ballot. In Chicago, candidates running for

an elected office need these petitions and a certain number of signatures to get on the February

ballot. Up until a couple months ago, Kelly Cousin signed every one of these petitions that came

her way because she

figured the more the merrier. Yeah, I'll sign your petition to get you on the ballot. Like,

I'm doing my civic duty by allowing people to hear your voice and let you vote. But then she

found out that she'd been making a really big mistake. Because according to the law, our registered

voter can only sign the petition for one candidate for treasurer, clerk, mayor, or aldermen.

And so when I found out from one of the aldermen candidates in our ward that they had to be unique signatures, it blew my mind.

Like, why would anybody do that?

Kelly did more research and realized the petition

process is super confusing. So she asked Curiosity, how does this process work, and who does it

benefit or harm? I'm reporter Annie Nguyen, and I've been on this for months. And here's

what I learned. First, candidates need to collect a lot of

signatures. To give you an idea of just how many signatures, in Chicago, a mayoral candidate needs to

get 12,500 signatures. That's compared to just 500 signatures in Los Angeles. For critics say,

the next part gets real crazy. Candidates challenge the validity of each other's signatures.

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