CBA Record November-December 2025

political campaign, but also the growing phenomenon of a deep pocketed candidate who antes up a huge campaign fund and scares off potential rivals. In fact, this has been happening more fre quently in recent years. Other issues mentioned include: l Politics . Nearly everyone talked about a need for connections and political support. Even though countywide slated candi dates can and do lose, and even though more vacancies are shifting to subcircuit elections where political influence varies from one subcircuit to another, the perception that it simply isn’t wise to try to run against an endorsed candidate seems to have very much reestablished itself in recent years. Several people attributed this to the local Democratic party slating stronger candidates in recent years and thereby improving its success rate. l Hyper-politicization . A related problem is the growing frustra tion in general with trying to run a judicial campaign in a hyper-politicized climate, given the ethical restrictions that judicial candidates can face regarding fundraising or com menting on specific issues, as well as the increasing scrutiny and politicization of judges’ decisions. l Compensation . Our state government’s switch to a less-generous pension plan for newer judges was often mentioned, although acknowledged to depend in importance on a person’s specific financial situation. More often mentioned was the significant income gap between private- and public-sector lawyers, which can discourage the former from considering judicial candidacy. This observation would explain the surprisingly low numbers of candidates across all of the major cities cited above. l Petitions . Increasingly difficult and expensive signature require ments and increasingly frequent and costly petition challenges constitute another challenge.

l System structure . Specifically, the structure of subcircuit system, makes it possible for candidates within a subcircuit to coordi nate or signal who will run and when, thereby avoiding direct competition. l Voter information . Finally, several people mentioned the fact that voter information about judicial candidates circulates more effectively today than in the past, and this seems to be discouraging individuals who would anticipate negative rat ings from bar associations from filing as candidates at all. (This point, if the only one, could be considered largely positive.) While different people mentioned and emphasized different specific points, the overall picture from everyone was consistent and clear. Clarity, though, does not mean that a problem is easy to solve, and this one certainly is not. Continuing Concerns There is even greater reason for concern going forward. Our state government recently increased the number of subcircuits in Cook County from 15 to 20, reducing the size of each subcircuit and making all of them more vulnerable to the issues mentioned here. Moreover, the new subcircuits are being populated with dozens of converted associate judgeships—creating many new vacancies to fill while there are not enough candidates for the vacancies that already exist. To be fair, our court system is not staggering under the weight of incompetent elected judges, at least not yet. But obviously there is a problem here, and it requires attention. A judicial system based on elections faces danger if the electoral process is meaningless. Albert J. Klumpp, PhD, is a research analyst who has written seven previous articles about judicial elections for the CBA Record. He wishes to thank everyone who provided comments for this article.

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24 November/December 2025