Here Come the Judge!

I remember the first time I ever voted. I was still in the army when I turned 21, which was how old you had to be to vote in those days. I had registered to vote when I was home on leave, and sent away for an absentee ballot when election time came. My parents had moved to Palos Park by then, so I didn't have the chance to vote against Mayor Daley and his ilk. I seem to remember that the Palos Park election was non partisan, so I must have asked my parents who to vote for in that one. I didn't plan to live there when I got out, so I didn't really care who won, but it was my first election and I didn't want to just blow it off. Then there were the judges. There must have been at least 50 of them, and I didn't know anything about any of them. They weren't running against each other, you had to vote "yes" or "no" for each one, and I don't think their parties were listed. Not knowing what else to do, I voted "yes" for all of them. A few years later I might have voted "no" for all of them on general principles, but I didn't have any political ax to grind in those days.

I don't know how many judges we have where I live now, but their terms don't all expire at the same time, so we only have to vote for a half dozen or so at once. Our judicial elections are non partisan on paper, but all the judges are nominated by their political parties, the parties are just not printed on the ballot. This would be confusing, because all judges still look alike to me, if it wasn't for those mailers that Uncle Ken mentioned. Sometime before the election, each party sends out at least one mailer that tells you which judicial candidates were nominated by their party. I just write down the Republican ones and vote for them.

Living in Michigan, it's hard for me to imagine a crooked assessor, but I suppose it's not that unusual in Chicago. Our township supervisors used to do the assessments, and they still might in the smaller townships. Our township, being adjacent to the thriving metropolis of Cheboygan, is a little larger than most, so the the township board hires a professional assessor. His name is Clayton something, and I think he does the assessing for at least one other township as well. After the township guy does the annual assessment, a state guy follows right after him and does it all over again. If the state guy thinks the township assessor assessed too low, he multiples it by number that is usually only a fraction over "one". I understand that used to happen because the township supervisors, wanting to get re-elected, routinely low balled their assessments, or at least the assessments of their families and friends. I don't know why they didn't just dispense with the township guy and have the state guy do it, tradition I guess. At some point, the township people all got together and sent their supervisors off to assessing school, so they could learn to do it right the first time, and the state multipliers have all been "1.0" for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, the state guy still goes through the motions, I suppose just to keep everybody honest.