The races where Illinois voters can really have an impact

By Burt Constable , Daily Herald
Posted November 01, 2004

George W. Bush long ago wrote off Illinois as a state John Kerry would win. Bush supporters can preach until they are red in the face, but Illinois remains a "blue state."

In our Senate race, every prognostication - except for the dead-man-flailing comic stylings of delusional Alan Keyes - predicts Barack Obama will cruise to victory.

For some voters, Melissa Bean's unrelenting challenge to Congressman Phil Crane will be the key race. For other congressional voters, Henry Hyde's attempt to turn back challenger Christine Cegelis might hold their interest. Referendums concerning taxes, schools and fire protection districts grab the attention of those who read. But when voters come across page after page of judicial retention names, their eyes glaze.

We talk a lot about those brave American men and women who have given their lives and limbs to protect our freedoms, but many voters voluntarily surrender their rights the instant they are confronted with the ordeal of standing in a booth for 15 minutes. "There's an enormous fall-off," sighs veteran trial lawyer Matthew Iverson, current co-chair of the Union League Club of Chicago's committee on the judiciary.

Voters can't be bothered with judges. Or they simply vote no (or yes) on every name. The worst voters approach judicial races as if judges were horses running in the third race on St. Patrick's Day - voting "yes" on all the "fillies" or the ones with Irish names. It's a lousy system.

"We've been pushing for literally about 100 years for a merit selection system," Iverson says of the Union League's call for judicial reform. "Elections (on judges) in a large urban area make no sense at all."

Even lawyers who are in courtrooms every day can't make informed decisions on all 74 judges up for retention in Cook County this year.

"You have to have help," says Iverson, who notes the Union League's www.ulcc.org Web site offers voters judicial information and a printable palm card to carry into the booth.

The Web site www.voteforjudges.com has everything you need to cast an informed vote, including an explanation of why it matters. "Judges affect our everyday lives in ways most of us don't think about," reads a joint letter from Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, longtime legislator Dawn Clark Netsch of the Northwestern University School of Law, and Malcolm Rich of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice.

Judges dole out justice in divorces, custody cases, landlord-tenant tiffs, criminal matters, O'Hare expansion, tax cases, the death penalty, pension coverage, labor matters and even in that traffic case where you got a ticket for going 52 mph in a 45-mph zone. Judges in retention elections must get 60 percent "yes" votes or lose their gigs. Voters haven't answered the call for justice. "No bad judge has been defeated since the 1980s," Iverson says. In 1990, the bar associations did a wonderful job of publicizing a bad judge who was up for retention. The judge was voted off the bench but unfortunately rode the name recognition to a victory in his campaign for a promotion to an appellate judgeship.

Republicans, Democrats and judges are reluctant to turn on one of their own. Fortunately, there is a host of bar associations who will.

The associations differ on some judicial candidates, but of the 74 judges up for retention in Cook County, only two - Dorothy F. Jones and Susan Jeanine McDunn - drew unanimous disapproval.

They've been declared "not recommended" by the Illinois Bar Association, the Asian American Bar Association, the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the Women's Bar Association of Illinois, the Coalition of Suburban Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Cook County Bar Association, and the Decalogue Society of lawyers. For detailed evaluations, visit www.chicagocouncil.org.

"What we are trying to do is defeat the worst of the worst," Iverson says. "Voters have the ability to eliminate the worst."

It's an awesome power we don't enjoy in races where we select the lesser of two evils. So do your patriotic duty, research the judges, bring the information into the voting booth with you, and cut the weakest from the judicial herd.

© 2004 Daily Herald, Paddock Publications, Inc.