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Ask Slashdot: How To Become Informed In Judicial Elections?

Posted by timothy on from the today's-the-day dept.

First time accepted submitter yincrash writes "Today I've been looking up information on local elections and have found it virtually impossible to determine information on judicial elections, both with regards to information on the candidate, and what makes a good judge. Is there a good way to find information on these candidates? chooseyourjudges.org seems to agree that this is basically an impossible task. What do slashdotters do in an information vacuum? Just abstain from voting? Write-in something in protest?"

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Complain to the Bar by roccomaglio · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Bar does not allow judge candidates to answer many of the questions you would like answered. This professional organization is choosing to require the judge candidates to withhold this information. If the candidates do not follow the rules set by the bar they could loose their law license and be ineligible to be a judge. Your only option is to complain to the Bar in hopes that they will be influenced by your complaint.

    1. Re:Complain to the Bar by donutz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sometimes that is a coin toss when comparing highly educated with highly experienced or two similar candidates.

      In cases like this, or where there is plainly not enough information, leave that one blank -- don't vote for either unknown. Unless your ballot stupidly requires you not to leave any races blank (are there such ballots?)

  2. Judges should be apolitical by bitslinger_42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're in a state where the vote isn't "choose between Person X and Person Y to be a judge", chances are the vote is to retain an existing judge for another term. My philosophy has been that, unless I become aware of gross misconduct (i.e. bribery, criminal prosecution, failure to recuse self when obviously interested in the case, etc.), I vote to retain

    The rationale is that the judiciary is supposed to be apolitical. If they have to go through campaigning, the way other candidates do, they become subject to campaign contributions and all the evils those entail. Leave them where they are unless they've done something obviously wrong.

  3. Re:Check out your State Bar. by Revotron · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those wondering, the website in question is http://www.showmecourts.org/

  4. Vote against the incumbent by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't like anybody holding power for too long, and typically when a judge gets elected it's a position for life. Most attorneys are reluctant to run against a sitting judge, so many times they don't even have an opponent. So when they do have an opponent, I usually vote against the one with "Judge" in front of their name.

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  5. Re:Personally by jittles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok dude my ballot was 4 pages long. Not even 8.5x11 pages long. None of the judges had opposition. Most of the local people did not either. If I don't have the time or the energy to run for one of those positions, what am I supposed to do? Force someone to run at gun point? And I didn't say that I vote blindly. I said I abstain from voting when I do not understand an issue. I would think you could be okay with that. At least I am not going down the ballot marking every single D or R on the ballot. But if you're not okay with it, I don't care. It's my right to vote, and I will do so how I see fit. At least I try to tackle the important issues and ignore the ones that I don't have the time to address.