A recent op-ed in this paper (“Why Washington should stop electing its judiciary,” Dec. 2) noted that we need to appoint judges in our state instead of letting the people elect them. How we currently select judges and justices in our state is actually a real threat to judicial independence in a number of ways, and we need to make changes soon.
We are not alone, though, because judicial independence has been at risk for decades at the national level, as each side of the political spectrum jockeys to get judges and justices appointed or opposed in what’s become a circuslike atmosphere.
We can’t remove politics from the selection process by simply changing the method by which we select judges. The difference between appointment and election is that the politics in the appointment process occur behind closed doors, while the politics in the election process are open for the public to see. The problem is not that we elect judges in our state; the problem is that we have no check and balance on how we fill vacant judicial positions. We do not do much to help people understand how to vote for judges, and we also make it way too difficult and expensive to run for judicial office.
There are meaningful solutions that will give the people a real voice while still preserving the benefit of an independent judiciary that is accountable directly to the people through popular vote. The problem is that the people who currently hold the power over the judiciary and judicial appointments in our state benefit from the status quo, so any meaningful change is not likely to occur. Notably, in 1996, the Walsh Commission officially announced a “new way of selecting judges, which … will depoliticize the process and give voters more information about judicial candidates.” Yet, nothing much has changed.