CBA Record November-December 2023

“Cheat Sheet” was simply a pair of images, with the names of all the retention judges and yes-no recommendations, designed spe cifically to be shared on social media. Despite the judges’ names being in alphabetical order rather than ballot order, which made its use more difficult, the guide was responsible for 2.6% of the retention votes cast countywide. It was statistically detectable in 49 of the 50 wards and 23 of the 30 townships, and remarkably found traction in Black- and Hispanic-majority wards where the major newspapers and bar associations had never produced any detectable impact whatsoever. The 2020 and 2022 elections showed that neither of these guides was a one-and-done influence. The “Girl” guide even grew in popularity, determining 4.2% of the 2020 retention vote and 5.3% of the 2022 vote. The “Cheat Sheet” was repackaged in 2022 as part of a broader outreach to younger voters, and its

the reporting of bar association ratings, they did at their peak influence double-digit percentages of judicial voters and did make the difference between retention or removal for more than a few borderline or controversial judges. The loss of this histori cally reliable information source means that voters who relied on it will either search elsewhere for information, or else will no longer vote based on any information source. It is too soon to know what the long-term consequences will be, but a surprising twist in the 2022 election gives us a hint. Reliance on Smartphones Unlike The Chicago Bar Association, which has been evaluat ing judicial candidates for more than a century, or the Chicago Council of Lawyers, which began doing so in 1972, the Illinois State Bar Association is a relative newcomer to the practice, first

evaluating Cook County retention candidates in 1988. For the first several cycles its ratings showed no detectable influence on the county’s voting. In 2018 and 2020, however, it reached enough voters to influence roughly 3.5% of the votes, more in the suburbs than in Chicago. This can be attributed to newspapers mainly in the suburbs that began report ing ISBA ratings in those two cycles. In 2022, though, the ISBA’s ratings cap tured a remarkable 9% of

influence fell to 1.8% of the vote—obviously not a pro ductive change—but it was still detectable in 54 of the wards and townships. The emergence of these two social media-driven information sources, so quickly and with so little publicity, clearly shows that the process of reaching out to and informing voters has fun damentally changed. Opin ions and recommendations on judicial candidates can now reach many more poten tial voters much more directly and without the filtering or support of traditional main stream providers of information.

the vote—half again as much as every other bar association com bined. Never in Cook County had any information source seen such a dramatic change in just one election cycle. This was not the result of any sort of publicity campaign by the ISBA, or any other sort of direct or indirect effort that promoted its ratings. So how did it happen? With only aggregate vote totals to examine, and without the benefit of exit polling, there is no way to prove for certain. But two important clues exist. First, Google searches on election day of “Cook County judicial retention” and similar combinations of relevant words all returned the ISBA’s ratings site first among all the bar sites. And second, the ISBA ratings were presented on its site in a mobile-friendly scrolling format. While not quite the optimal presentation, the ISBA’s presentation was far more effec tive for a smartphone and far easier to use in the voting booth than the full-page PDFs or the massive, unwieldy multi-associa tion grids prepared by the other bars. It appears that a majority of the voters who had previously relied on the two print newspapers searched for alternative guid ance using mobile devices and settled on the ISBA’s ratings. Further

Retreat of Print Media We all have seen how print journalism has suffered as electronic communication has become so pervasive. The range of issues and subjects covered by newspapers has narrowed, as has the avail ability of information on lower-visibility election issues and can didates. This was demonstrated in dramatic fashion in Cook County in the November 2022 general election when both of Chicago’s major newspapers completely ignored the judicial section of the ballot for the first time ever. Neither the Sun-Times nor the Tribune offered any recommendations on judicial candidates, and neither printed any of the ratings prepared by local bar associations. Read ers who had come to rely on the newspapers for help in casting their votes were left to seek help elsewhere, and readers who were not thinking about judicial candidates in advance were not even reminded that they existed. Historically our local newspapers have not been a dominant influence on judicial elections, but between their own ratings and

18 November/December 2023