Judging the election

LAST TUESDAY's judicial elections resulted in one new Supreme Court justice, six appellate judges and many more trial judges. Some are pleased with the results, others disappointed. But, overall, how should we grade this election?

Until late October, this election looked like most judicial elections - pretty quiet. Then, the Supreme Court candidates started arguing about money: Who got how much from whom. For years, polls have shown that the public is worried about the influence of campaign contributions in the courtroom, but when the candidates start arguing about it, you know it's a big deal.

Republican candidate Joan Orie Melvin called her Democratic opponent Jack Panella's receipt of $1 million from the political action committee of the Philadelphia trial lawyers "pay-to-play . . . justice for sale."

The Panella campaign retorted that Orie Melvin had taken $125,000 from the same PAC as well as significantly more from GOP-controlled PACs, and that her campaign was primarily funded by the Republican Party. Panella's campaign manager said, "She takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and says it won't corrupt her, but she says hundreds of thousands of dollars corrupt other people."

Usually, candidates say that contributions won't influence them. But here the candidates seem to concede that money matters and might even affect judicial decision-making. This is extremely troubling.

The candidates' concerns about the role of money in judicial campaigns didn't stop them from raising a lot of it, and the total spent on this race was in the millions. The problem is that this money comes from lawyers, unions, businesses and political entities who frequently find themselves in the state appellate courts.

The candidates also engaged in nasty ad campaigns. Both campaigns went negative, with ads that didn't really tell voters anything about why either was qualified for the Supreme Court. Instead, we got mudslinging and dual accusations of ads crossing ethical lines. As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently said, "Campaign ads about judicial races are like french fries for people who are hungry for information - they are not good nutrition."

There was a lot of noise leading up to Election Day, but voter turnout was a record low. In Philadelphia, it was appalling - less than 12 percent of registered voters.

Why don't people vote for judges? Some feel unprepared to decide who should serve on the courts. This isn't the voters' fault; it's hard to get relevant info. And for those who do vote, random or irrelevant factors like ballot position, party, residence, ethnicity, gender or a familiar name can sway decisions.

Voters want qualified, fair and impartial judges. Judging by turnout, voters don't put much faith in the ability of the electoral process to deliver this result. And this year's election couldn't have helped to restore that confidence. As Pete DeCoursey of CapitolWire (a news agency that covers state government) said, "Judicial elections are the least democratic elections."

Once again, judicial elections have left a bad taste in the mouth of Pennsylvania voters. It's as if we all watched from the sidelines as some celebrities threw an expensive party, got into a fistfight and traded barbs in the tabloids the morning after. We were entertained for a few minutes and then wondered what it all had to with us.

But choosing judges IS important, and their decisions DO affect our lives. Selecting judges deserves a process worthy of the importance of the decision.

The answer is merit selection for the statewide appellate courts. Merit selection is a hybrid of the elective and appointive systems that uses a bipartisan commission to evaluate candidates in advance of gubernatorial nomination and Senate confirmation. Periodic retention elections let voters decide whether a judge should remain on the bench. Merit selection focuses on the candidates' qualifications, gets judges out of the fund-raising business and eliminates the influence of random factors.

It's time for Pennsylvania to have a real dialogue about how we choose our judges.

Shira J. Goodman is associate director and Lynn A. Marks is executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (www.pmconline.org).