You step into the voting booth on Nov. 7 to cast your ballot. You go down the list voting, likely, for the candidate representing your preferred party. Then you get to the judges. No party is listed next to the names. What do you do?
The judges ran in primaries, but there is no party affiliation on the ballot. Were you supposed to go to the clerk of courts and research their past decisions and legal philosophy? How do you make an informed judicial vote? This is a dilemma many voters face.
“In 2017, voters in most of the state (including Columbus) will be choosing municipal court judges, and information about municipal court candidates is scarce,” Lawrence Baum, a professor emeritus in political science at Ohio State, said in an email. “The ballot provides only the names of the candidates; the campaigns are small in scale and the news media doesn’t provide much coverage.”
Illustration by Kelly Meaden | Design Editor
The judges whom voters elect differs year to year, and this year’s ballots will be cast to elect municipal court judges.
Jill Snitcher McQuain, executive director at the Columbus Bar Association, said everyone should be concerned with who is elected to municipal courts, not just the people appearing in those courts, because there are many different kinds of legal matters that come through it.
“Even if it isn’t something that you [partake in], you can be impacted by the case law that comes out of that decision,” she said.
Voting for a judge is a difficult process as there is little to no information available on the candidates, and most voters don’t know where to go or what information to look for.
The United States is nearly alone internationally in having its citizens elect judges, according to The New York Times. Switzerland and Japan have judicial voting, but on a very limited basis.
Organizations have recognized the lack of information available to voters and have created some meaningful information sources, such as one provided by the CBA.
The CBA created Judge the Candidates, which provides information on candidates running for judge, because it realized voters were having a hard time getting informed, Snitcher McQuain said.
“A few years ago the chief justice [of the Ohio Supreme Court, Maureen O’Connor,] had initiated some kind of study … basically the results of which evidenced that there seems to be not enough ways for people to get information about voting for judicial candidates,” Snitcher McQuain said. “We had created the site — five or six years ago — to share all the information we capture regarding the candidates so people can at least make an informed decision.”
In addition to CBA’s informational website, the University of Akron and League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Columbus offer similar resources, each offering two pieces of crucial information.
“You get two pieces of information about the candidates: from the candidates themselves and the lawyers that appear before the candidates,” Snitcher McQuain said. “It should be pretty easy for someone to make an informed decision from that.”
She added the CBA has never had any issues getting judicial candidates to respond to its surveys.
For those that want to vote along partisan lines, Snitcher McQuain said Judge the Candidates is a strictly nonpartisan, a political endeavor that seeks to inform voters. However, Baum said voters can look to official party ballots for guidance if they prefer.
“In Ohio, judicial candidates are nominated in partisan primary elections, but their party affiliations aren’t listed in the November ballot. For voters who think that the candidates’ parties are relevant to their choice, it can be difficult to find out which party nominated a candidate,” Baum said.
“The local political parties usually send out slates of candidates that they recommend to voters who are registered with their party, and those slates will indicate which candidates are affiliated with the party that sends out the slate.”
