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Many voters have no idea who they are voting for when they mark a ballot in statewide judicial races.
The campaigns are low profile and underfunded, yet still unnecessarily political.
Voters might choose their candidate by party affiliation – Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or because their name looks good on the ballot.
Even if we get lucky and elect qualified and competent judges, there is the influence factor. We can contribute money to judges for their election campaigns, and you can be sure that lawyers who practice before the courts and companies who may have a stake in judicial decisions do just that.
Most judges base their decisions on fact and law, as they should. But there is, at the very least, the appearance of influence, if not in fact. We can do better if we are to have an independent judiciary that fairly serves all Texans.
To improve the current way we elect judges and move closer to a truer independent judiciary, we would need to take politics and money out of the equation. It can be done through a process called merit selection and retention. OK, so you can’t ever remove all of the politics, but you can lessen its weight.
Here’s the simplified version of how it would work:
A judicial nominating commission composed of non-partisan public members and attorneys would supply a list of qualified judicial nominees to the governor who would select the judges for the various courts with consent of the Senate.
The judges would serve for some period (two, four, six years) before coming up for a retention election where voters would vote to keep the judge in office or not.
To make such a change would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to send a constitutional amendment to the voters, who could pass it with a majority. We think Texas needs this and hope the Legislature will come to the same conclusion.
There are seven contested judicial races on the Nov. 4 ballot, including choices for Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals and 13th Court of Appeals.
The Advocate’s approach to judicial races in the past has been to favor incumbent judges unless there was a compelling reason not to – sort of a self-imposed retention philosophy.
That remains our position and we recommend a vote for the incumbent judges.
This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate’s editorial board.