Judicial elections/Cook County

Great Debates
1

I’m going to combine some election-related issues here. There’s a Cook County, Illinois theme, but I invite comment from anyone. One issue relateds to judges. The other relates to current race for Chairman of the County Board.

In Illinois, we elect judges. Once a Circuit Court judge is initially elected (in the usual way, by winning the most votes), he or she need not face challengers in subsequent elections. Instead, the judge is subject to a retention vote. Unless 40% of the voters casting a ballot reject the judge, he or she remains in office. In Cook County, judges rarely are rejected. In the last 20 years, it’s happened about 5 times. 69 circuit court judges are on this year’s retention ballot in my area. (Not every judge is up for retention – they have 6 year terms. Therefore, only one-third of the full circuit court judiciary is up for retention this election.)

I’m a Cook County lawyer. I’m in court every week. My most recent trial ended Monday. I’ve practiced for 20 years. So it’s easy for me to cast an informed vote, right?

Nope. I’ve appeared in front of maybe 10 of the 69 judges. (Like most lawyers, I rarely appear in certain divisions. If a judge is assigned to criminal, divorce, or traffic courtrooms, odds are I’ve never seen the judge.) Of the 10, I know 7 or 8 well enough to vote without further research.

If I’m in that situation, how do the 99.9% of the voters who aren’t litigators cast a responsible vote?

In my view, most Cook County voters don’t. They vote gender, or ethnicity, or what the local precinct captain tells them. I believe that’s irresponsible. (So if you’re a Cook County voter, please spend 3 minutes to become at least minimally informed. Buy a newspaper on the day of the election, and take it into the polling place. There will be editorial reccomendations. Or, even better, check this site, and print out the evaluations that should be appearing shortly. www.chicagobar.org )

Now for the debate: Is this system a good idea? Given what I’ve said, you might think that I’m strongly against it. Actually, I’m not. It’s far from perfect, but most judges I see are good at what they do. I’ll probably end up voting to retain all but 3 or 4. And I have serious doubts that an appointive system would work better, given Illinois political history. (I do think that, on a Federal level, an appointive system works reasonably well.) If more voters cast informed ballots, the current system would be just fine.

Second debate question: Can anyone justify casting a completely uninformed vote, or one solely based on ethnicity or gender? Trust me, people do this all the time here. A woman with an Irish name has a significantly better chance of being elected judge here. More than once, candidates have legally changed their names to take advantage of this. (The Irish part, not the gender part.) This also happens in non-judicial elections. For example, the candidate favored to win the current race for County Board Chairman is a joke, based on all evaluations I’ve seen. For example, see http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0609250179sep25,1,2132701.story

Yet enough people are prepared to vote based on name, or race, or party, to make him the favorite. How is this possible? Yeah, people are idiots, but why bother voting if you have no idea what’s going on?

2

On re-read of my post, I was unclear on one issue. When I said that “this also happens” in regard to a certain County Board election, the word “this” refers to people casting uninformed votes. I did not mean to imply that any of the current candidates for this office had changed their names.

As far as I’m aware, neither Stroger nor Peraica are Irish names.

3

The first debare: I am uniformed on this topic, and thus do not feel like I would be able to make a worthwhile contribution.

I think people vote like this for three reasons:
1.) Because they’ve been told that being a responsible citizen means (among other things) voting, and who wants to look irresponsible?

2.) If someone is my gender and/or ethnicity they are more like me. I am the best person there is, so people like me would do a better job than people unlike me.

3.) It takes effort to look into the candidates and people are lazy.

Of course voting based on party is different. The psychology there just goes: “I’m a [blank] and beleive in the ideals/idealology of the [blank] party. So if [candidate] is running as a [blank] he must have the same ideals/ideaology as me.”

P.S. If tou pronounce Stroger the right way it can sound kinda Irish.

4

Random: Have you considered getting involved in the CBA’s Judicial Evaluation Committee? It’s a good way to spread the word about candidates.

5

Also, the Cook County Presidency is going to go to a black person because that’s what Daley wants. Daley is very good at parsing up the positions so no strong contender can emerge from any racial or ethnic group to oppose him.

6

I do not believe judges should be elected or subject to retention votes at all. Which is why I leave that section of the ballot blank.

7

We elect most judges in California too. I usually leave those sections blank, as in most cases I know absolutely nothing about the judges in question and have no valid reason for going one way or the other. I realize that just by being a citizen it does, potentially, matter to me who is sitting on the bench Department O., Superior Court in and for Los Angeles county, or any other department, but that is not an excuse for uninformed voting. I hope that most of the people who do vote for or against judges know at least a little more than I do, so things sort of balance out.

8

A minor scandal in Los Angeles recently was the Judge Dzintra Janavs, a twenty-year veteran of the bench who lost her judgeship to Lynn Olson, who, while a lawyer, has practiced only a handful of years (but does, apparently, make a mean bagel). Olson, who was rated “not qualified,” beat Judge Janavs, who was rated “exceptionally well qualified.” (Fortunately, Governer Schwarzenegger appointed Judge Janavs to a vacancy on the court, so we won’t lose her.)

But how could an electorate select a patently unqualified person over Janavs? The presumption, of course, is that her “foreign sounding name” is what did her in. Now, the odds that I’ll ever encounter Olson on the bench are slim – there are 400+ judges in LA – but it isn’t fair that the other judges will have to carry her until she learns the law sufficiently to be a judge.

I think the system can work, if people do the minimum preparation. I don’t think that you need to go out and research every name on the ballot, but when the bar association rates judges – as they do – it’s very easy to look at that and let that be your guide.

9

If there are over 400 judges in LA and elections are held every 2 years voters need to look up at least 133 judges to make an informed choice.

10

First, I want to say I’m sorry it took me so long to respond to posts in this thread. I’ve been busy, and yesterday was probably one of last nice-weather days of the year.

I agree that this CBA program is the best place to get information about candidates. One of my links in the OP goes to the CBA’s website, although judicial evaluations for this year’s general election are not up yet.

I’ve never seriously considered getting involved as a committee member, but I do fill out the questionaire, and a couple judicial candidates have submitted my name to the committee as someone who’s represented the opposite side (opposite to the judicial candidate, then acting as a lawyer) at trial. This results in a confidential phone interview from the committee.

11

Leaving this section blank is far from the worst choice, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. Also, as I’ve said, I think that the vast majority of judges do a decent (if not excellent) job.

But there are a few that aren’t doing a good job. Also, even if we set aside the question of retention votes (for existing judges), there are many, many unqualified candidates for open judgeships. What do you propose doing about those? Who gets to decide, if not the voters? Chicago politicians, with no oversight?

12

But a lot of people do vote, often for foolish reasons. While your choice is better than making a foolish pick, why not do some basic research? (That can be a 3 minutes task – as easy as looking at a newspaper’s editorial recommendation, or that of a local bar association.)

Even if the foolish votes break 50-50 (they often don’t), your informed vote removes some of the randomness from the system.

13

Well, probably not. First, if there’s a retention ballot, all you have to do is skim a list, to see who’s NOT recommended for retention. That might be 3 names to remember. (You vote to retain all the others.)

Even if there’s no retention ballot in California (and Campion’s reply implies that there is not), you’ve got two fairly easy options available. Grab a newspaper, or print out a bar association’s website page. Option 1: Bring that to your polling place, and spend 7 minutes selecting the recommended names. Even if there are 133, and all 133 are contested, you can do 20 names a minute, right?

Option 2: Skim the recommendations to figure out who sounds really good, or really bad. Exactly how you would do this would depend on the precise format or method used by your local newspaper or bar association, but there’s usually a way to tell. Vote those races, and ignore the rest.

14

How do you evaluate a judge’s performance? Here in MA, judges are appointed-and most of them are the worst sort of political hacks. A few get away with murder (working short hours, bad decisions, etc.). all in all, you are better off being able to vote for judges-political appointees are NOT the way to go!

15

Is electing judges an American thing? How many other countries use popular elections to choose judges? I know Japan has retention votes, but the judges are still appointed by the government.

16

Interesting question about other nations.

By the way, you are aware that U.S. (Federal) judges are appointed, right? The elections I’ve been talking about are for Illinois (state court) judges. Also, not every state court system has an elective setup.

17

I know federal judges are appointed and several states appoint some or all of their judges (Massachusetts and New Jersey for example). Alot of states also elect lower court judges and appoint appeals court judges/

18

For those that may be interested, the CBA judical evaluations for the November election are out.

http://www.chicagobar.org/public/judicial/2006generalfindings.asp