Primary Voters Paid Attention to Judicial Races

While turnout for the Primary Election was low (only 1 in 5 Chicago voters participated), an analysis by Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts found that voters did not neglect judicial races, and for the first time for any primary election in Cook County history, voters primarily based their decisions on bar association ratings. Candidates who held or shared higher ratings than their opponents in ratings by the Chicago Bar Association and the Alliance of Bar Associations gained a 29-percentage-point advantage.

The percentage is due in part to low overall turnout. But analysts note that the figure is nonetheless noteworthy: “What makes the figure remarkable is that it was done with no help from either of the major Chicago newspapers. The Tribune and Sun-Times both completely ignored the judicial part of the ballot, providing no endorsements of their own and not even reporting bar association ratings. This was the first time in at least a half-century (and likely much longer) that the Chicago print media offered no voter guidance in a judicial election.”

Primary Election voters as a result turned to bar association ratings on their own through VoteForJudges.org, one of the voting resources provided by LWV Chicago.