The dust will be settling soon.... meanwhile let's talk about comments

The results of the November election should be certified today, three weeks after the polls closed. I'll hold off on final reports on a couple of races until these come out -- but it does appear that, when vote by mail ballots are finally tabulated, Judge Patricia M. Fallon will have completed her comeback from a substantial Election Night deficit and held on to her 12th Subcircuit seat. Admittedly, I did not report on every update.

The truth is, the results of the 2020 November election were fixed like a fly in amber when the last precinct closed in Cook County on the evening of Tuesday, November 3 -- or perhaps when the Main Post Office on Harrison Street stopped postmarking envelopes November 3.

(One good thing about efiling is that it's been a long time since I had to drive downtown in the middle of the night and get in line at the Post Office in hopes that my freshly-printed appellate brief would be postmarked on the filing date---thank you, mailbox rule!---even if, due to the length of the line, it did not look like I would make it to the counter until a minute or two after midnight. Anyone who doubts the literal, physical truth of the expression 'his heart was in his throat' has never been in line in those circumstances....)

But, though the election results were determined by 12:01 a.m. on November 4, these were not immediately known. The order in which the votes were counted made for significant, but entirely artifical, drama. I complained about 'horse race' coverage on TV on Election Night; it didn't seem right for me to contribute to the phenomenon in the races covered here on FWIW. Frankly, I think I reported enough to show the trend lines without engaging in unnecessary speculation.

Judging by the always anonymous comments in my inbox, several FWIW readers disagreed. I got updates, particularly on the 12th Subcircuit race and Judge John J. Mahoney's retention bid, every time new numbers were released.

Often these updates were accompanied by fairly creative statements that I would never print. (Admittedly, there were a couple of "creative" statements on other topics that did make it through in recent weeks, temporarily, due to my unfamiliarity with recent Blogger format changes. But I think I eventually removed them all.)

I have already suggested that electorate generally was in a sour mood this election cycle, just judging from the lower numbers across the board for Cook County judicial retention candidates: Even the highest rated, least controversial jurists fared worse this year than their similarly-situated brothers and sisters in years past. This sour mood was likewise reflected in the anonymous comments in my inbox this cycle.

I've struggled with how I might share some of these with you without actually aiding and abetting the defamatory purposes of some commenters. Some specific names have been deliberately retained. Also, some of the references are certainly obvious, but, in my best judgment, unavoidable, in order to report on the sentiments apparently floating around there among some in our community. I think I can get away with these (and, yes, I've edited where I can):

• What? Nothing to say about that Retention Class now? So much for judicial independence. The old dinosaur survives. [Redacted] trash talks. And two judges left twisting in the wind. Next time it will be 4 of them. Watch your backs 2022. So many of you have so much baggage. Save a seat for us at the Dearborn.


• Like mom always said, it's not always cream that rises to the top. Congratulations (?) to the Retention Class of 2020. But just remember, the Daley Center will eventually have to reopen and those of you who barely came to work pre-COVID will have to start riding those elevators with the rest of us sooner or later. You know what that means: R-E-T-I-R-E-M-E-N-T. You know many of you have been talking about it among yourselves and those "leakers" have been telling the rest of us. We will patiently wait for you to make your exit next summer. We will wait and have our petitions ready to pounce on the competition. Donald Trump and the Retention Classes are my role models: sociopaths who don't care about anything but themselves. Time for us to get ours.


• I've been phone banking all weekend long, courtesy of the Fair Tax Amendment people. Been calling people all over Cook County, encouraging all of them to vote NO on the following judges: Flannery Cobbs Rosario Rivers Raines Buford Sheahan Kubasiak Time to create some more countywide vacancies for 2022.


• [A certain Democratic committeeman] is something else. He has a mannequin dressed in a white Klan robe positioned outside the early voting location. It has a sign saying "Vote No on these Judges -- Mahoney, Wadas and Democopoulos -- former prosecutors and current racists, bad for OUR community." Very powerful stuff. I would have taken a picture of it, but the guys standing watch looked like they had a healthy respect for their Second Amendment rights and I wasn't going to push my luck.

I had one would-be commenter who researched 60+ names of persons he or she thinks will be on the retention ballot in 2022. This person is already demanding a "no" vote on all 2022 retention candidates "if they don't resume jury trials at the Daley Center in January 2021." I think (I devoutly hope) this was one person who submitted about 10 different comments along these lines (further example: resume trials "or else we FIRE the 2022 Retention Class"). I have reason to believe that one person was responsible for all of these comments since each one named every judge who might be on the retention ballot in 2022.

I posted about a judge who passed away during the height of the election season. I had to suppress several comments. Whatever happened to not speaking ill of the dead? Once upon a time, I thought that a Supreme Court committee on civility was unnecessary... now I wonder if its task is not akin to bailing out the ocean.

Some FWIW readers may be smart lawyers, but they don't understand how Illinois is set up: At least one would-be commenter presumed that Justice Kilbride's loss in his retention bid bodes ill for Justice Mary Jane Theis, who will be on the retention ballot in 2022. Um... Justice Kilbride was elected as a Democrat from an area that has always been Republican -- and has only become more and more so as America's partisan divide deepens. Whatever else the future may hold, Justice Theis will not be facing that kind of uphill battle in Cook County two years hence.

I have to think that this would-be commenter knew better than this... but, on the other hand, the failure of civic education seems more and more apparent:

Hello don’t you think the rate of Fallon’s votes seem fishy? Btw 7 of my families mail in ballets have yet to be counted as of tonight, November 17th. All straight Republican (including DiFranco). That’s not right. No updates on numbers today. Watch tomorrow she will pull ahead. No transparency.

Um... yeah... when I was a brand-new voter, in the late 1970s, living with my parents just across the Lake County line, I could see my primary vote reported in the local newspaper. And I knew it was my vote that had been counted... but only because I was the only one taking a Democratic ballot in my precinct. But that's about the only way that a voter can be absolutely sure that a particular vote has been counted.