Friday, November 08, 2024

Trump won the Cook County Jail vote. How do you think the judges fared there?

I got the story from Rich Miller's Capitol Fax. He got it from a Threads post by chi_urbanist. Here's the graphic:
Quoting Miller now, "Trump won the 19th Precinct in the 24th Ward 594-572 (49%-47%), with 47 people voting for RFK, Jr. Four years ago, Joe Biden won that precinct with 96 percent of the vote, to Trump’s 3."

Why? Who knows? Maybe, as the saying goes, game recognizes game.

Be honest, now: You did not see that coming, did you?

Neither did I.

But it got me wondering: What did the jail population think of the judges on the retention ballot?

My hypothesis, going in, was that prisoners might have little love for the judges who will preside over their cases. I rather expected, in fact, that the detainees might agree -- on this one point at least -- with some of the police officers who put them there. Remember, Second City Cop always recommends a "No" vote on every retention judge.

What would you guess?

I'll pause here while you think about it... scroll down when you're ready... and no cheating!

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As it turns out, if the fate of the retention judges was decided by the inmates' votes alone, only 23 out of the 75 Circuit Court judges for whom votes were actually counted would have been retained. Both of the Appellate Court justices would have been retained.

I was a little surprised that prisoners would give better than 60% "Yes" votes to so many. I don't know that I could be so generous were I incarcerated.

And the lowest favorable vote was just below 50% -- 49.95% for a female judge married to a former CPD lieutenant -- meaning that, in every case but that one, more than half the inmates voted to approve each and every judge for a new term.

Now the high was only 67%, and I'm sure some might think that this vote must be for someone sitting in the Criminal Division with a turn-'em-all-loose reputation, right? But, in actual fact, the judge who got the most favorable rating from the jail inmates is assigned to the Domestic Relations Division at the Daley Center. Sixteen of the 23 judges getting better than 60% "Yes" votes out of the jail precinct were female.

In the one contested countywide judicial vote, inmates chose Democratic candidate Pablo deCastro over Republican Tien H. Glaub by a margin of 72.2 to 27.8%.

I don't pretend to be able to discern any 'big picture' statement from these returns. Don't jump to conclusions, perhaps, but that's not very original. Maybe someone else can explain....

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