How to vote for judges this 2026 Primary Election
VoteForJudges.org is your resource for researching judges.
We are pleased to announce that VoteForJudges.org is ready and available as a resource for Cook County voters in the 2026 primary election. Early voting is already underway, and with a day left for the primary election, we expect that this guide will be a useful resource in making informed decisions.
Primaries are often talked about as the less exciting precursor to the general midterm election upcoming fall. Turnout is often much lower for primary elections: The 2022 primary election saw a turnout of 21.68% across the state, compared to the 51.06% seen during the general election. Due to much of Cook County voting with the Democratic Party, primary elections can be the deciding factor for a candidate. This makes it especially important to vote for judges during the primary election. Illinois is one of two states in which judges are selected to a first full term in contested partisan elections, but incumbent judges are reselected in unopposed retention elections.
Every day, judges make hundreds of decisions that impact our friends, neighbors, and family. They influence much of our everyday lives from within a courtroom. Understanding how we can vote for judges that reflect our values is a step towards making our courts fairer and more just.
We launched VoteForJudges.org in 2010, at a time when this kind of information about judicial candidates was nearly impossible to find. Each election cycle, our website is accessed hundreds of thousands of times by Cook County voters looking for the information they need to elect the judges they can trust to make impartial decisions based on fair consideration of the facts and the law. When voters are informed, the judicial election process has the potential to improve the transparency and accessibility of our court system and the accountability of all system actors.
Other helpful resources for voting in the 2026 primary election:
- Injustice Watch’s guide to the 2026 Cook County judicial primary elections (here)
- “How to research the Illinois judges on your ballot” by NBC Chicago (here)
- “Ask an expert” Q&A with Chicago Appleseed’s Founder, Malcolm Rich (here)
- Ballotpedia: Illinois Judicial Elections (here)