DN Editorial: COURTING CORRUPTION
Take electoral politics and dark money out of choosing judges
DOES THE NAME Michael Wojcik ring a bell? How about Emil Giordano? Christine Donahue? Anne Covey?
They are all nominees to fill vacancies on Pennsylvania's three appellate courts: Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth. The odds are that at least one, and perhaps all of them, will be elected in November and take their seats on the bench, deciding every case appealed from local courts.
If you flunked the ID test, you are in good company. Except for a relative handful of activists, judicial candidates are the electoral equivalent of question marks. When we see their names on the ballot, we ask: Who the heck are these people?
Most of us have no clue, even though in the primary season that ended May 19 the candidates for the three appellate courts spent a total of $5 million on their campaigns, according to Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.
More will be spent in the November election, and it is likely that big givers will be pouring money into the campaigns, either directly to the candidates or indirectly through Super PACs making independent expenditures.
Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts has been working for years - no, make that decades - to change the way we select judges in Pennsylvania based upon the common-sense idea that electing people we do not know, financed by special interests that often conceal their true identities, isn't democracy in action, but a failed system.
At last, the advocacy group has made some headway. State Reps. Brian Cutler, R-Lancaster County, and Madeleine Dean, D-Montgomery County, have introduced a bill in Harrisburg to change the state Constitution to do away with direct election of appellate judges.
It's encouraging that Gov. Wolf supports the bill, which installs a "Merit Selection" system of picking judges. It won't eliminate politics from the process, but it will eliminate an electoral system that has become a big money game that favors special interests.
Under the bill, a 13-member commission, with five appointees made by the governor and eight by the Legislature, would review and recommend lawyers or local judges to fill vacancies on the appellate courts. The governor will have to choose from this list. The state Senate will have to vote to confirm his nominees. Those confirmed will sit on the bench for four years, then face a nonpartisan retention election - where voters will get to vote "Yes" or "No" on these judges.
Why is this system better than the one we have now? It takes money out of the equation. It assures that only qualified candidates get on the list sent to the governor. It will end the "Who the heck are these people?" reaction of voters who see the names on the ballot.
It will also reduce the partisanship so evident in picking our judges. Confronted with names they do not know, most voters will vote according to their party affiliation.
This bill would apply only to the appellate courts. All local judges will still be elected directly by the voters.
Obviously, this bill is not a sure thing. Because it changes the Constitution is must be approved by the Legislature in two sessions, then placed on the ballot, to be voted up or down by the voters.
It will take a long journey for the Cutler-Dean bill to pass. This week the reform took an important first step.
