Voting for Judges

For this election ballot voters are faced with a list of nearly 60 judges seeking retention. Only 60% of the votes cast on any judge need be in favor of retention for a judge to keep her seat —no judge has lost office since 1990.  Voters must think critically about the retention election and should...
November 1, 2012

Early Voting Starts Today

Early voting has started in Illinois--photo ID is required for early voting and you may vote at any polling location during the early voting period. If you're in Cook County, don't forget to peek at voteforjudges.org.  (Outside of Cook County, the ISBA offers judicial evaluations for voters) Remembe...
October 22, 2012

Donor Diversity through Public Matching Funds

In May, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Campaign Finance Institute released a report on how public financing improves diversity of small donors and changes how candidates view potential donors and potential constituents. The report’s authors note that the data set is rather small, but the tre...
August 23, 2012

Thoughts after the Primary Election

In the run up to yesterday’s primary race, Appellate Justice Aurelia Pucinski was a vocal critic of the role of campaign financing in judicial elections. Judge Pucinski was particularly critical (audio link, relevant portion at the -1:20 mark) of the role of PAC money and money from donors and organ...
March 21, 2012

Illinois & Cook County Primary Judicial Election Results

As of today, our Voteforjudges.org website received 518,000 hits since the beginning of this judicial evaluation season with about 17,000 unique visitors. This is exciting evidence of a concerned electorate! Below is a table showing election results for Illinois Supreme Court, Illinois Appellate Co...
March 21, 2012
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