And then there were 10....

Every single election cycle voters are amazed to find that they don't have any choices in most Cook County judicial races.

These voters didn't vote in the primary... on St. Joseph's Day... before the first day of Spring... before the emergence of the 17-year cicadas even. They think that, because the election is in November, that's when they get to make their choices. Some don't want to let their neighbors have any chance of finding out what party they favor. Some are resolutely independent and wouldn't ever vote in a primary.

But, at this stage of the election cycle, most of the decisions about who will be elected to the Cook County judiciary have already been made. I told FWIW readers that there were no judicial election contests set up in Cook County for November except for one in the new 18th Subcircuit and three others in the redrawn 12th.

Turns out, I was wrong.

There are the four subcircuit contests I knew about -- that's eight candidates -- and one countywide Circuit Court contest. That would make 10.

Here's the complete list of Cook County judicial candidates who face election contests in November (the links will take you to each candidate's website):

• Frank Andreou
• James "Jack" Costello
• Pablo deCastro
• Tien H. Glaub
• John Hock
• Maria McCarthy
• Lynn Terese Palac
• Pamela Curran Smith
• Alon Stein
• Matthew Taylor

Pablo deCastro, the Democratic Party's candidate for the countywide Flannery vacancy, now has a Republican opponent.

Tien H. Glaub works for the City of Chicago's Department of Administrative Hearings as a hearing officer and, according to her new campaign website (linked above), "helps manage the administrative adjudication at the City of Chicago’s hearings facilities." She has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 2008, according to ARDC.

Glaub was not a candidate in the Republican primary this past March.

Pablo deCastro was one of the 12 primary winners who were put on the bench by the Illinois Supreme Court this past Spring. At the time, I reported that deCastro, like each of the others, was unopposed in November -- and the Supreme Court appears to have believed that, too.

I am working to find out more as to how Glaub qualified for the ballot; I hope to be able to report further on this soon.

If you look at the Sidebar (on the desktop version of this site) you will note that the 10 names above are now the only listed Cook County judicial candidates. The former, longer candidate list has been archived on Page Two.

Besides Glaub, several other candidates in the new list were not on the primary candidate list. We'll look at these new websites in future posts.