Every couple of years, Cook County voters are faced with the same dilemma: How to pick from dozens of judicial candidates?
Source: leyhane.blogspot.com
Luckily, there's help.
First, the basics: In February or March of even-numbered years, Cook residents can vote for judicial candidates in party-based primary elections. In Chicago, almost all the judicial candidates appear on the Democratic Party ballot.
In some years, a confounding number of candidates—50 or more—run for the bench on the primary's Democratic ballot. As many as five or six might vie for a particular position. How does a voter choose?
One long-time source of help: the ratings found at the voteforjudges.org Web site. The site compiles candidate evaluations done by about a dozen Chicago-area bar associations. Find the 2026 primary election candidate ratings here.
The Web site, run by the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, this year provides a summary of evaluations for each candidate—by displaying their name in either green (earned many approval ratings) or red (got a significant number of disapproval ratings).
One drawback: In some cases, bar associations provide similar, favorable ratings for two or more competing candidates—so the choice isn't obvious.
For those positions, voters can do a deeper dive on particular candidates—thanks to candidate profiles provided by a group called Injustice Watch. For the 2026 primary election, search for candidates' names in Injustice Watch's rundown here. (Note that the rundown doesn't display on older browsers.)
Want to learn more about evaluations? See Injustice Watch's 2018 piece by Emily Hoerner and Jeanne Kuang. Hoerner and Kuang looked into the challenges faced by bar associations that rate judicial candidates.
Helpfully, Inside Chicago Government has a video showing how to use the judicial candidate ratings. We made it some years ago, but today's scheme is pretty much the same. And it's on YouTube.
One more thing: Want to see your ballot before going to vote? Chicagoans can visit the Web site of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, and look for "Your Voter Information." You can download your ballot, mark it up, and take it along when you vote.
