This is the last issue of The Xavierite before the Illinois Primary on March 17th.
Because of this, it is important that you know a few things before you vote on March 17th or earlier.
One, early voting is an option. If you do not want to wait in line at your polling place on election day, you can go onto your local County Board of Elections website and look up your closest early voting location.
Early voting lasts from March 2nd to March 16th, so you have plenty of time to vote. If you cannot make it to a polling place during early voting or on election day, fear not, there is another way to make your vote count.
You can still apply for a mail-in ballot from your local County Clerk. As long as you fill out your ballot right, postmark it no later than election day, and have it received by the County Clerk within 14 days of election day, your vote will count.
If you are not registered to vote, you can apply while early voting or on election day, you just need two forms of identification.
Now that you know how to vote, you need to know what is on your ballot.
In Cook County, there are three different ballots you can take: a Democratic one, a Republican one, or a non-partisan one. Both the Democratic and Republican ones will feature Presidential primaries alongside Congressional, Legislative, County, and Judicial primaries. The non-partisan ballot would only have referendum questions if your locality has one on the ballot.
If you are voting, you probably know a decent amount about the top of the ticket (President, Congress, Legislative, County), but most of the ballot is reserved for judicial offices.
Due to this, I highly recommend looking up your sample ballot and doing research on these judicial candidates. See who they were endorsed by, see what they stand for and how they would act.
Judges are a very important part of society and this may be your only chance to decide which ones get elected.
If you do not know where to start when it comes to looking up these judicial candidates, there is a website called Injustice Watch that will aggregate each candidate and show you what they stand for.
It is how I decided who to vote for in each judicial race that is on my ballot. Voting is one of the greatest rights we have as Americans, so it is extremely important that we exercise that right whenever we can.