It’s that time again where I harangue my measly Chicago audience and remind them to get out there on Tuesday, March 18th and perform one of the most critical civil duties.  Voting.  Yes, this primary has selections for Governor and Attorney General and Treasurer and blah blah blah, but they are far from the most important offices on the ballot.  The most important would be judges.

Judges are the one elected officials you are most likely to run into in a professional capacity in your everyday lives.  And it likely won’t be for a fun reason.  Rarely is it said, “Yay, I get to go before a judge today!”  For this reason, it is vitally important that we get good judges on the bench and even more important to remove the bad ones.

You are ill-equipped to decide which judges are good and which are trash.  Thus you must trust the opinions of those who interact with judges on a daily basis; lawyers.  Lucky for us, the Alliance of Bar Associations for judicial Screening (ABAJS?) produces a pdf document that you can print out and take with you to your polling station.  The document is a conglomeration of various bar associations’ recommendations on whether a judge is qualified or not.  If you have your favorite bar association (and who doesn’t?), you can follow their recommendations.  I tend to look for even one unqualified rating by any of the bar associations and vote down that judge if one exists.

Now go do your duty on Tuesday.