Not every comment left in the queue is equally perspicacious

In a post last Friday I hope I gave due credit to the anonymous reader who helped me understand how and where detainee votes at the Cook County Jail were counted in the recent election.

But not all comments submitted to FWIW are equally good. Some are just flat-out misinformation. Take this one for instance (which I am printing only here):

Leaving the judges retention vote blank counts as a “yes” vote. This is cook county, corruption is baked into the cake!

I'm not sure where our local corruption is baked. Probably not by elves in hollow trees. In back rooms, perhaps, or in vehicles with tinted windows, or while walking briskly and furtively down windblown streets. In any event, our local corruption is presumably baked as far away as possible, whenever possible, from hidden recording equipment or persons wearing wires.

But leave that aside for a moment.

It is the first part of the proffered comment that is flat-out wrong: Leaving a retention judge blank on the ballot (voting neither 'yes' nor 'no') does not constitute a 'yes' vote. If anything, failing to vote in a retention race enhances the power of voters who say 'no' to all judges.

Assume a million voters come out for a general election. All things being equal some 15-20% of these will vote 'no' on every retention judge on the ballot -- for our purposes, let's round it up to 20%... or 200,000 votes.

If all the million voters vote on every judge, and all the voters who do not reflexively say nay to all vote 'yes,' then every judge wins retention comfortably, with 80%.

But, usually, there's a dropoff as one goes down the ballot.

This year, in some places, some voters left the presidential ballot blank, too, choosing to vote only in races further down the ballot. But, normally, if 1,000,000 come out, these all vote for the high-profile races at the top of the ballot and some lose interest moving down. If 200,000 bypass a particular retention race, that leaves 600,000 'yes' votes and that constant 200,000 'no' vote lump. The judge is still retained... but with only a 75% 'yes' vote. If 300,000 voters bypass a race, that leaves only 500,000 'yes' votes and the judge's margin slips to 71% or thereabouts. If 400,000 voters skip the race, the judge is down to 67%. If half skip the race, leaving only 300,000 'yes' votes, the judge is right at the fatal 60% line... and, if we're being technical, the judge in this example is not retained, failing to obtain the necessary 60% plus 1.

And no retention judge gets everybody (except the 'just say no' crowd) to say 'yes.' In addition to the 'just say no' crowd, every judge will attract some 'no' votes because he or she has done the job, even if he or she has done the job well: People will still be mad about the guilty findings on traffic tickets, or that the spouse got more in the divorce than the voter thought appropriate. Jealous former law partners, persons whose relatives went to jail, persons who thought the judge was too soft on the person who mugged the voter's relative.... Some judges will have run afoul of one or more evaluating bar groups. The scenarios are endless, and so is the retention judge's angst... at least until the tallied votes seem safely in the judge's favor.

But do not be deceived, Dear Voter: Passing by a retention judge's race does not count as a 'yes' vote.