It sure was encouraging to see the Trib piling on State Rep. Joe Lyons' (D-Chicago) stealth attempt to build a new incumbent protection program in Chicago. But we can't help but criticize the paper for failing to drive home the most egregious part of Lyons' legislation: that pesky one signature rule.

Our post yesterday pointed out that the measure would prohibit voters from signing more than one petition per race. As David Morrison of the Illinois Coalition for Political Reform (ICPR) noted, there's a real danger that candidates with deep political organizations could quickly scoop up thousands of names, limiting the number of potential signatories in each ward. Worse yet, ICPR blogs today is that a candidate could collect plenty of signatures and then find out many were invalid only after their petitions faced a challenge.

Lyons himself hinted that this is indeed the grand plan. "The more friends you've got, the easier it should be [to collect signatures]," he tells the Trib. "And if you don't have any friends, you shouldn't be running for alderman." Pretty sneaky.