Curious, practical reflections on election coverage

First, the curious:

One question stood out as perhaps the most unanswerable among many. If the current state of political affairs can't do it, what will it take to get people to vote?

Goodness knows, we in the press strive to do our part. Indeed, one factor driving all the reporting and investigating we do of corruption and mismanagement in government is to help people know how their government is being run and, in the most-hopeful traditions of democracy, let them look for and raise up alternatives.

Yet, despite it all, people in general seem satisfied to rail away in their home kitchens, at bars, cafes and community gatherings and perhaps in the privacy of their own thoughts, then let a paltry minority determine who will build their roads, shape their economy and collect their taxes. In the six-county region around Chicago, voter turnout Tuesday hovered in the range of 25 percent, with some rates lower than one in five. This in a state that has become a national laughingstock, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and has some of the most-distressing unemployment numbers in the country.

Is it yearslong voter burnout? Have people just given up? Are they protesting having to declare their party? Do we all just take government for granted?

Even as I write this, we have reporters exploring these and other questions, and we'll continue to delve into them - and many others related to the quality and construction of our government - in coming months. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, we'll give more of you a reason to participate in the process.

And now the practical:

I think often in this tech-driven age of John Henry and his mythical 19th century race against a steam-driven hammer in the construction of rail lines. One among many themes of that legend is the superior appeal of the human spirit over the impersonal mechanics of advancing technology.

What does this all have to do with covering an election? For those of us in the newsroom Tuesday night, delivering the results we had collected and getting them online and into print demanded John Henry's indomitable spirit and unrelenting determination. To some extent, the production of the newspaper is always a dealing-with-the-devil process of making accommodations with Technology, but Tuesday night the technology side wasn't remotely in an accommodating mood. As a result, the scene in the newsroom was a combination of strained nerves, constant struggle and unprintable language.

Yet, somehow - probably thanks largely to the planning of assistant news editor Michelle Brandon along with organizational and technical contributions from senior news editor Teresa Schmedding and assistant managing editor for online content Kurt Gessler - we managed to keep information streaming constantly to the Web and get the print pages completed by presstime with the most reliable and up-to-date information available in the suburbs.

It wasn't always pretty, particularly for our online database, but in the end, it was we humans who headed home victorious with our sweaty journalistic muscles rippling and Technology that was forced to retire to its corner with its puny electronic tail between its legs.

We still have some fence-mending, as it were, to do with our computers, but hopefully we'll continue to find ways to employ them ever in the service of getting you the prompt, authoritative information that will get and keep you interested in the even more mundane and frustrating machinations of government.