There is a way to determine judges that almost always works. We have a good system in MN for appointing judges. So, an incumbent is usually good. We also have a tradition of people running grudge campaigns against sitting judges. So the challenger is often bad.

So just vote for the incumbent.

The thing is, unless one is a lawyer, or watches courts very closely, there is no real way to determine who is a good or a bad judge. Yes, there are cases where judges make egregiously bad decisions and give a rapist 6 months suspended, and that’s about the only time a judge will be named in the news. I looked up a few, looked at their records, decided that they are not objectionable and voted for them. But, I realized that for all of the seats I had on my ballot, it would not be a good expenditure of time to do this on each judge.

Perhaps a better system would be to have each Judge subject to a “No” vote at the end of their term, and if they don’t win the referendum a replacement is named by an independent panel.

In many states there are Justices of the Peace, and they do not need to be judges to be elected. They handle small claims up to 10k, municipal infractions and traffic violations, landlord-tenant cases and issues like that. I lived in a very Republican district when I first moved to Phoenix, and there was a crowded field in the primary for the J o P in my precinct for the Republicans but no Democrats chose to run. I was preparing to file for the primary in2018 for the Democrats, and talked to a few J o P’s from other districts and got some support. But by then I had moved to a new precinct (the boundary was only 100′ away from my new house.) I looked into who was doing the J of P in the new precinct and people that knew said he was a good guy, and he is a Democrat.) I decided to not run in the new precinct, since the main reason I had considered running was to get a Democrat on the ballot in a Republican District and help drive turnout.

Okay, and there is that 94K annual salary.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1579084964611919872

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1578947337874833409

In case that doesn’t work: this is Marchant saying:

President Trump and I lost an election in 2020 because of a rigged election. When my coalition of secretary of state candidates get elected, we’re gonna fix the whole country and president trump is going to be president again

In the eyes of the modern right (resident right-wing clown included, as we’ve seen) crime and fraud are OK if they’re done by the right.

dean says “designed to hurt the people they view as “less””. More mind reading.

Not at all. SImply reading their decisions, republican messages, and your posts.

dean says “designed to hurt the people they view as “less””. More mind reading.

With partisan gerrymandering off the table, only racial gerrymandering is left for the courts. But whether lines are drawn to help white, black, asian, latino or any other racial group – it is racial gerrymandering all the way down.

There is no such thing as non-racial gerrymandering. You cannot draw a line which doesn’t help or hurt some candidate (and they all have a skin color).

That means that all gerrymandering is political and is not permitted according to Supreme Court law.

I think the independent state legislature theory may be the correct constitutional law. After all – that is what the constitution says. I guess we will see.

Yup, but consider
– one of the right wingers was known for sexual harassment when he was put on the bench
– one of them had a history of sexual assault while he was in college — and isn’t happy that it was brought to the eye of the public
– one of them lied through her teeth about what she viewed as ‘settled law’
– another is just a raving bigot who thinks the federalist society, an anti-democratic group, is a force for good

Scum get on the bench, you get horrific decisions designed to hurt the people they view as “less” — the same as rickA does.

It is well-known that intense competition between democracy, authoritarianism, and fascism is playing out across the globe in a variety of ways – including in the United States. This year’s US supreme court term, which started this week, is a vivid illustration of how the situation is actually worse than most people understand.

A supermajority of six, unelected ultraconservatives justices – five of which were put on the bench by presidents who did not win the popular vote – have aggressively grabbed yet another batch of cases that will allow them to move American law to the extreme right and threaten US democracy in the process. The leading example of this disturbing shift is a little-known case called Moore v Harper, which could lock in rightwing control of the United States for generations.

…

Think about this theory in the context of the last US election. After Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump resoundingly in both the popular vote and in the electoral college, Trump tried to organize a massive intimidation campaign to steal the election which played out in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January. But behind the scenes, the legal core of this attempt was to convince the many Republican-controlled state legislatures (30 out of 50 states) to send slates of fake Trump electors from states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan where Trump actually lost the popular vote.

If Trump had succeeded, he would have “won” the election via the electoral college (itself an anti-democratic relic) and been able to say in office another term.

If the court upholds the rogue ‘Independent State Legislature’ theory, it would put the US squarely on path to authoritarianism

Disturbing stuff.