Judicial Performance Commission Pilot Project
There are 73 Cook County judges up for retention in the November election. Because voters have no real opportunity to independently evaluate such a large slate of candidates, unfortunately, many voters either abstain from the retention vote or make decisions based on familiar ballot cues (e.g. ethnicity or gender) that have little relationship with judicial performance. Our experience with prior voter education campaigns, however, shows that voters will use judicial voter information if it is presented in a user-friendly way by a credible source.
In February, the Judicial Performance Commission Pilot Project for Cook County, with a generous grant from the Joyce Foundation and the assistance of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, launched an ambitious project intended to revolutionize the judicial retention electoral process in Illinois. The JPC’s Pilot Project has two primary goals: (1) to provide objective, research-based evaluations of judges seeking retention to the public prior to elections and (2) to use those evaluations to create judicial performance improvement place to help the court address problems identified in the process.
The Commission will present the results of the surveys, interviews, and investigations to voters, the judges being evaluated and their supervising judges in order to achieve the goal of improving the performance of Cook County’s judges. Because much of our data is collected anonymously, we believe it represents a candid and frank assessment of judicial performance and offers a solid foundation for individualized plans to improve the performance of our judges.
If the Pilot Project is successful, it will provide a model for future voter education programs and offer a detailed body of information for use in reforming the judicial retention process in Illinois.