ISBE publishes 2016 Candidate Guide, Election and Campaign Finance Calendar

If you're going to play the game, you've got to know the rules.

The Illinois State Board of Elections has published the rulebooks for the current election cycle. Here is a link to the 2016 Candidate Guide. Here, too, a link to the 2016 Election and Campaign Finance Calendar (both of these are .pdf documents).

Judicial candidates can begin circulating petitions as soon as one month from today -- September 1. The regular filing period opens November 23 and closes November 30.

Nominating petitions for judicial vacancies occurring during the interval from November 9 through November 30 will be accepted from December 14 through December 21.

The ISBE has not yet posted a list of Cook County judicial vacancies -- but if this election cycle is like the last one, we can expect a list to go up sometime in August. Whenever the list does go up, it will still be subject to change if and when new vacancies are posted.