Election Law, Politics, State Judges

Judge Loses Election, Vows To Ignore Result

Electing judges creates a messy system. And it's messier when one of the judges doesn't believe in the process.

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Everyone’s heard about the dangers of popularly elected judges. At least twice a year there’s an article or study concluding that the decision to hand over the judiciary to mostly uninformed voters and unfettered campaign spending creates notorious sites of corruption. But by and large, states just refuse to let go of the quirky practice of directly electing judges.

And piecemeal reform may be a cure worse than the disease. When one state created a “hybrid system” with non-partisan executive appointments followed by “retention elections,” it concocted a process so convoluted that a state judge managed to lose an election on Tuesday and then flatly declared that she’s not giving up her job…

Judge Sheri Raphaelson of New Mexico — who earned a nod in ATL earlier this year for medically tending to an injured criminal defendant, and then passed judgment on him later in the day — secured around 56 percent of the vote on Tuesday. And while that would be a resounding victory in a normal election, New Mexico doesn’t work that way. Judge Raphaelson needed 57 percent to keep her job as part of New Mexico’s hybrid system for selecting judges.

Under New Mexico’s hybrid system for choosing and keeping judges, judicial vacancies are filled by gubernatorial appointment from nominees submitted by a nonpartisan commission.

To stay on the job, appointees must run in the next general election, where they can face both primary and general election opposition. The election winner then faces periodic retention votes, where voters say “yes” or “no” to keeping the judge on the bench.

After a high-profile — relative to a state judicial election, anyway — media campaign, Judge Raphaelson failed to net the requisite votes. Thankfully for her, she’s a lawyer.

But Raphaelson now says she should never have been on the 2014 ballot in the first place and that she was not due to face voters again until 2016. And she maintains three other 1st Judicial District judges shouldn’t have been up for retention either, because none of them has served a full six-year term on the bench.

“My term expires on January 1, 2017, and I plan to continue to work until that time,” Raphaelson said in a letter to District Judge Raymond Ortiz, the district’s chief judge.

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At issue is a constitutional provision stating that, after being elected in a partisan race, “Each district judge shall be subject to retention or rejection in a like manner at the general election every sixth year.” Judge Raphaelson was nominated in 2009, won a general election in 2010, and understandably believes she’s in the clear until the 2016 election.

Except the state disagrees. The court administrator pegged Judge Raphaelson for reelection because they claim “at the general election every sixth year” refers to a scheduled series of elections that put every judge up for retention regardless of when they won their first election. The last such “general election” according to the powers-that-be took place in 2008. In other words, Judge Raphaelson would have been clear for a six-year term if she won her first election in 2002 or 2008 or 2014, but since she won in 2010, she had to go up for retention with everyone else.

Putting aside the linguistic ambiguity — and the state interpretation is understandable, but Judge Raphaelson’s reading is much closer to plain English reading — the state’s system is woefully inefficient. It could require a judge to wage and win two campaigns a year apart, while some other judge can sail through one campaign and enjoy a six-year term just based on the quirk of when the judges get nominated. Way to waste more public funds by holding a bunch of unnecessary elections every year. Just have one set of elections every sixth year, or have elections every year for six-year terms. The middle route is just stupid.

Assuming Judge Raphaelson continues to fight this result, the New Mexico Supreme Court will have to decide the matter. Based on the language in the constitution, she definitely has an argument.

Judge vows to stay despite election loss [Albuquerque Journal]
Courting Corruption: The Auctioning of the Judicial System [The Atlantic]

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Earlier: Non-Sequiturs 02.12.14

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