A sign of the times

[kandrathe]

Here, every year, we have to vote on county, and state judges, but judges are not allowed to campaign, or be affiliated with a political party. Consequently, no one knows a good judge from a crack-pot. People here obviously vote for judges based on their name alone. I do some inside research on the court dockets to at least figure out who the crackpot incumbents are, as they have a record. Many times they run unopposed though.

Following you off-topic, but I have to comment: Frankly, that only proves (once again) to me the folly of electing ALL your officials. Your implied solution of letting them campaign just doesn't address the problem. The average joe has no criteria for evaluating judicial competence and there (most emphatically) *should not* be any political slant to the decisions they hand down.

I agree with you. It's another case of too much democracy. I would rather they be appointed by the governor for a short term(4 years), with a simple majority approval of the state senate. Currently, the electorate has no basis for deciding, and no way of evaluating their performance, and as you say, if they did have a way to evaluate them, they wouldn't know a good one from a bad one.