Chicago Votes Voters Guide tracks Injustice Watch evaluations of retention hopefuls

What is Chicago Votes, you ask?

It descirbes itself as "a non-partisan, non-profit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young Chicagoans."

The group's "About Us" page elaborates:

We bring together young, driven Chicagoans who are ready to get their hands dirty and learn the grassroots basics of our democracy. Want to learn how to organize large-scale volunteer events (we got ya!), oversee a massive voter registration drive (you bet!), throw an awesome panel/debate/conference (who doesn’t?) We’re committed to educating, training, and empowering the next generation of Chicagoans and have designed our programs to act as springboards for young leaders to enter the life of political and public service.

The group touts its voter registration drives at Cook County Jail (registering over 5,000 new voters) and lobbying to make Cook County Jail the "first jail in the country to become a polling place during the 2020 Illinois Primary Elections." Scroll down on that same web page to find that Chicago Votes and the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice have launched a court watching program, "sending community members inside Cook County Criminal Court to watch judges and collect data on bias and misconduct."

And what is the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice, you ask? According to its webpage, the ILARJ is "accelerating the transformative realignment of power and accountability to reimagine and remake justice through the collective work of the community centering lived experience with participatory democracy models toward an abolitionist future."

Anyway, Chicago Votes has weighed in with a 28-page voters guide; that's the cover depicted above. It isn't easy to find on the Chicago Votes website; at least, it wasn't easy for me.

Then again, I may not be in the target demographic for the Chicago Votes folks (namely, "young people committed to dismantling systems that don’t serve us & reimagining new ones").

The judicial commentary is on pp. 21 and 22 of the guide. The retention judges information is on p. 22 (click to enlarge):

You will note the QR code linking to the Injustice Watch Cook County Judicial Elections Guide. While the Chicago Votes guide contains a typo or two, and does not accurately state the supermajority required for retention judges to keep their positions, it does list in red every judge who had any controversy, according to Injustice Watch, stating, "The judges highlighted in red either received a negative review or are marked for a negative controversy by Injustice Watch."

At least for those at whom the Chicago Votes guide is directed, this treatment presumably will lessen the 'yes' votes for the judges thus identified. It certainly appears to magnify the effect or impact of Injustice Watch.