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 What’s in a name? Pick a Judge you think you know
by Tom Campbell
May 22, 2008
Further review of the May 6 primaries provides yet another disturbing revelation about the way we select Judges in our state.
We know it was the year of the woman (except for Hillary) and the record-breaking turnout included throngs of first-time voters, many of them African American. Almost escaping any attention from analysts was the Court of Appeals race. Judge John Tyson, appointed in 2001, was running for an eight year term to the court. He was challenged by two women, District Court Judge Kristin Ruth and former Wake Clerk of Court Jan Pueschel, and Sam J. Ervin, IV, grandson of the late great Senator of the same name and current commissioner on the State Utilities Commission.
According to state law judicial races are non-partisan. When elephants fly! Tyson is a Republican, as is Pueschel, while Ervin and Ruth are Democrats. Two names were to advance for the November election. The two winners were Ervin and Ruth. Tyson came in third. The inescapable conclusion is that people voted for Ervin because they recognized his name and somebody may have told them he is a Democrat. Ruth won because she is a female Democrat.
I don’t want to imply this election was a crap shoot, nor do I want to insinuate that neither Ervin nor Ruth are qualified, but I am convinced these two were not selected strictly on the basis of merit. Being honest, I study issues and politicians for a living and I don’t know enough about these candidates to make a really informed decision. So how does the average voter pick a judicial candidate? Do they pick the name that sounds like someone they know? Do they pick men, or women, or the third name down the list, or do they choose the one who had a sign out front of the polling place?
Selecting judges, whether for a district traffic court or the highest court in our state, is a serious and important responsibility. While we believe strongly in the rights of citizens to select those who would lead us most of us are not qualified nor informed enough to do a good job of picking judges. Our state is correct in desiring that judicial selection be non-partisan. But there also needs to be some vetting to make sure the potential jurist merits selection and few average citizens qualify to make that decision.
There are many ways that could be chosen to select judges. Most any of them would be superior to the current process of voting for people you hardly know. It is time that we put an end to this unwise and unproductive way of judicial selection. We deserve better and we can do better than this.
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