The race for governor appears to be seriously tightening. The U.S. Senate race has been close all along. Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Secretary of State Jesse White, both Democrats, are surely heading for big wins next month.

But Republicans are doing quite well in congressional and state legislative races pretty much all over Illinois except in the "bluest" of the blue regions in and near Chicago. Down-ballot Democratic incumbents are running scared all over the place.

And if you want to see how truly weird this election year is, then head on over to House Speaker Madigan's southwest-side Chicago district. Madigan has sent five campaign mailers to his constituents over the past several days.

While the Republicans say the pollsters are contacting the wrong people, the fact remains that three polls released last week had the Illinois governor's race within 2 percentage points. And five polls released in the past month have shown it to be a single-digit race.

The Chicago Tribune's pollster had Democratic Governor Pat Quinn leading Republican state Senator Bill Brady 39-38 last week, which is a narrower margin than its 5-point Brady lead a month ago. A CNN/Time poll had Brady up by 2, and a Democratic Governor's Association poll had Brady up by one. Public Policy Polling had Brady with a 7-point lead.

The Republicans say the "universe" is skewed on all these polls. They believe that Republicans could actually outnumber Democrats come Election Day by a narrow margin. At the very least, they say, those other polls just skew too far Democratic.

If the Republicans are right, it would be the first time their party would outnumber or come close to outnumbering Democrats in any Illinois election in a very long time. This is a weird year, so nobody really knows who's correct at the moment. Still, you need to keep the GOP's strong objections very much in mind as we head into the final weeks of this campaign.

On the general-election ballot in Illinois, voters will be able to choose from four candidates for U.S. Senate: a Republican, a Democrat, a Green, and a Libertarian.

That might seem like sufficient choice - and it certainly covers a wide political spectrum - but consider that seven candidates were removed by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

That's because Illinois has put so many barriers between people who want to run for office and the ballot. Established parties - Republicans, Democrats, and Greens presently - need to collect 5,000 valid signatures for their statewide slates. Independent statewide candidates and other parties need to collect five times as many valid signatures: 25,000.

Beyond that, the petitions of third parties and independent candidates are often challenged by people working on behalf of Democratic or Republican organizations. This year, Republicans have been most active in the ballot-access wars, perceiving a threat from several limited-government parties.

These challenges have several effects. First, they make the effective signature threshold much higher. "The challenge process effectively turns the 25,000 requirement into a 50,000 requirement to account for potential[ly] invalid signatures," wrote Steve Hellin, the communications director for Illinois' Libertarian Party, in an e-mail.

Second, the financial, human, and time resources required to fight a challenge are significant and come at the expense of traditional campaign activities such as fundraising, advertising, and connecting with voters one-on-one. "Attention is put to the mechanics of existence, which may or may not be especially relevant in actually getting someone elected," wrote Phil Huckelberry, chair of the Illinois Green Party. "It's an absurd approach to democracy."

If there were any doubt that America has just one major political party with two branches, Democrat and Republican, it was permanently dispelled once the nation's primaries ended. I would call it the Progressive Party, with Progressive Democrats on one branch and Progressive Republicans on the other. My definition of a "progressive" is one that believes in political change and social improvement by coercive governmental action. Under a true "republican" form of government, which our founding compact dictates, societal improvement comes from self-determination and mutual respect of each other's property. The only thing that has progressed, under both major parties, is the size and burden of the welfare and warfare state, for this and future generations of Americans.

The evidence of the charade that the two major parties are not one and the same - and that the establishment media is complicit in maintaining this myth that there is a difference and you actually have choices - is this issue's cover story on ballot access in Illinois. Further evidence is the Progressive Party's vitriolic response to the Tea Party movement. Rather than engage Tea Party participants (an obviously growing and organized voting bloc) about their concerns, no matter which party their voter-registration card reads, the Progressive Party demonized them.