The trend had been positive for Judge Shannon O'Malley, but it is no longer so: As of the most recent updates available, O'Malley has fallen below the 60% threshold required for retention.
Voters in the City of Chicago have apparently sealed O'Malley's fate: In the most recent update available online, O'Malley has 357,290 "Yes" votes out of a total of 653,861 votes cast in his retention race. That translates to only a 54.64% "Yes" rate.
O'Malley has more "Yes" votes in the Cook County suburbs (457,050 in the latest update) and a higher favorable percentage of 63.28%... but when the vote totals are aggregated O'Malley has only 814,340 "Yes" votes out of a total of 1,376,091 votes cast in his race. Taken together, O'Malley has only a 59.18% "Yes" vote -- insufficient, at this point, for his retention bid to succeed.
The City says there are still 47,664 VBM ballots returned, but not yet counted, and another 6,100 provisional votes yet to be examined. Those figures date to Sunday. The County's numbers, updated as of yesterday, show only 1,128 uncounted VBM ballots actually received -- and no provisional ballots remaining.
Both the City and County report large numbers of VBM ballots sent but not received. The City states that 38,208 VBM ballots were sent out but not yet returned; the County reports 51,987 such ballots. A week after the polls close, it becomes increasingly likely that many, if indeed not most, of these are never coming back.
Given these figures, it seems likely that O'Malley will not be retained. He is over 11,000 votes shy, at this point, of a 60% favorable vote at this point. Three out of four of the remaining ballots actually received would have to break his way for him to claw back to the 60% mark. Given that most of the remaining ballots actually received appear to be from the City, where Judge O'Malley has fared worst so far, that seems unlikely. Time will tell.
2 weeks ago
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5 comments:
Analysis is coming...but I'd better wait until they stop counting.
No judge should go through this
I sympathize, Anon 11/12 @8:42 p.m. -- this long, drawn-out vote counting process serves no one's best interests, and it has to be torture for anyone stuck in it.
It isn't just retention judges who face this, as FWIW readers will recall: We've had a few razor-thin primary contests in the last few election cycles where seemingly safe leads vanished or candidates were ahead or behind with each update.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can set an earlier deadline for the postmark on VBM ballots so that they can all be counted -- or the vast majority can be counted -- on Election Night along with all the other votes. It just takes some legislative action.
We can do this!
Nah, several judges should have gone through this. But the cowardly bar associations did not give them the ratings they truly earned. Or, in one instance, gave the correct rating just one day before an election to protect their past president who is a presiding judge of First Municipal. Nice to have friends. Meanwhile, someone else will continue wreaking havoc in Law Division and Evans will only do something until he is forced to.
Anon 11/14 @7:33 a.m. -- Thank you for waiting until this morning to submit this comment. Yesterday was World Kindness Day... and your sentiments might have seemed out of place.
But to respond substantively: The thing that Anon 11/12 was talking about -- I believe -- was not that judges should never have to go through the possibility of rejection in a retention election -- because (a) I don't think anyone is pushing for lifetime tenure for Cook County judges and (b) without meaning to agree or disagree with any of your specifics, I completely agree that, in any given year, some judges will not be worthy of retention.
But the thing that Anon laments, the thing that no judge should have to go through, is this post-Election-Night limbo, where the judge is neither betwixt nor between, bobbing above and then slipping below, the 60% line. It happens to other candidates, too, in races for judicial vacancies and other offices besides, where the results are too close to call, and each new update may mean the candidate is ahead... or behind. It would make anyone crazy. And it is entirely unnecessary. We simply have to make the vast majority of VBM ballots returnable by Election Day -- by, for example, requiring they be postmarked no later than 7 days prior. (We could also eliminate most VBM ballots, and dropboxes, and early voting sites... but I think there may be about as much sentiment for these things as there is for life tenure for Cook County judges.)
Let's fix this: Anyone in the General Assembly care to write up a bill?
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