On the judicial retention ballot, the default vote should be "yes"

In most elections, supporters of a candidate who wins 59% of the vote will use words like "landslide" to describe their favorite's splendid victory.

In Illinois judicial retention elections, a judge who receives a 59% favorable vote has to look for a new job come the first Monday in December.

To remain in office, a judge must receive a better-than-60% "yes" vote (often expressed as 60% + 1). Historically, most Cook County judges have little trouble surpassing this minimum requirement, high as it may seem.

For several consecutive elections (from 1992 until 2018) all Cook County judges won retention. In 2018 one judge was targeted for defeat by the Cook County Democratic Party (which historically had always supported all retention judges, even those first elected as *gasp* Republicans) -- and the targeted candidate lost. In 2020, the Party targeted a veteran judge and two judges in "judges' jail." One of the judges in judges' jail quit before the election; the other lost. The targeted veteran judge survived.

So even the occasional judge who has incurred the wrath of powerful politicians can survive on the retention ballot. And most judges do their necessary work unnoticed, safely out the politicians' reach.

But this rosy prospectus is darkened by the fact that, in any given retention election, 15 to 20% of the Cook County electorate reaching the retention ballot will vote "no" on every single judge. Every single judge -- no matter how universally praised by the bar associations -- no matter how highly praised by the press, dead tree or online -- no matter how mellifluous their surnames -- will get a "no" vote from 15 or 20 of every 100 voters.

In the 2020 retention election, for example, only five judges (all female) secured more than an 80% "yes" vote -- and none of them got 81%.

Some people (me, for one) believe that the influence of consistent "no" voters increases in inverse proportion to the turnout: The number of always-"no" voters is roughly consistent from election to election, so if turnout is lower, the indigestible lump of "no" votes may climb higher than 20%.

And turnouts for gubernatorial elections, like this one, are typically lower than the turnouts in presidential election years.

And that's before the selective "no" votes are counted. Lawyers will vote against judges who did not (in the lawyers' subjective view) treat them, or their clients, with the respect they considered due. Some may vote on the basis of 'sour grapes' -- that judge ruled against me, so I will vote 'no' on that judge. And ordinary people, too: "No" on the judge who dinged them on the speeding ticket, "no" on the judge who handled the divorce, "no" on the judge who put the voter's relative in jail, "no" on the judge who didn't jail that trouble-making kid down the street. Any time a judge makes a decision, someone is likely to be upset. And a judge's job is to make decisions.

So judges on the retention ballot (and their friends and family) may be forgiven if they get a little squirrelly around this time.

We have many very good, hard-working, scholarly judges in Cook County. With two exceptions, one of whom has already retired, all of the judges on the 2022 retention ballot are recommended by most of the bar associations that screen judicial candidates; the overwhelming majority have been recommended by each each and every one of the bar groups.

Therefore, while I mean to express no opinion about whether any particular judge should or should not be retained, I submit that the default vote on the judicial retention ballot, in the absence of a good reason to vote otherwise, should be "yes."