The Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance is reaching out to voters to increase awareness about judges on the November ballot.
The commission is increasing its traditional advertising and making a push on Facebook to reach out to more voters and inform them of the judges they are asked to keep in office on the ballot, said Annette Corallo, the commission’s merit selection program manager.
Judges appear at the bottom of the ballots in Arizona and the selections are often left blank, either from voter fatigue or from a lack of knowledge of a judge’s merits.
“What we do is make every effort we can to inform voters,” Corallo said. “[We] make the effort to get the word out to a wider and wider audience that these findings exist.”
The Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Review is an independent body that conducts surveys of people who come in contact with judges, like clients and attorneys, to determine a rating for each judge.
Those ratings are used to determine if a judge meets the commission’s standards, and the reviews can then be distributed to voters.
Voters decide by a yes or no vote whether they want a judge to remain in office for another term. More than 40 judges are up for retention votes this year.
Corallo said voters simply run out of steam by the time they get to the bottom of their ballots.
“The theme for this year is, ‘Finish the ballot,’” Corallo said.
The commission is widening its net this year and ensuring ballot completion by creating a Facebook page, running public service announcements on the radio and TV and by putting more ads in newspapers, Corallo said.
“We’re trying to take advantage of new media to get the word out,” she said.
The commission’s program specialist, Vanessa Haney, said the commission’s findings are put in a voter information guide, which includes information on candidates and propositions. This guide is sent out by the Secretary of State’s office every election year in early October.
“After people get through the propositions and candidates, it could be that they’re just over it,” Haney said.
She said voters often don’t take time to find information about judges.
“It’s time-consuming to do the research,” Haney said. “We have a website so people can see the judge’s scores, but it does take a while to go through the information.”
However, on the rare occasions when the commission finds that a judge does not meet its standards, voters do not always vote accordingly.
“A judge in 2008 was found to not meet standards,” she said, noting that he had a lower number of votes to retain him than in previous years. “But the majority of voters did decide to retain him.”
That judge was Juvenile Court Judge Crane McClennen, according to commission documents. Records show one cause for the commission’s rating was a general tardiness on the judge’s part in making rulings.
The commission compiles information by distributing surveys to people who have interacted with judges, like clients, legal counsel and administrative personnel.
Those people give judges ratings on certain areas of performance, including fair administration of justice, freedom from personal bias and the issuance of prompt rulings.
The commission then gives judges a rating based on those surveys.
Andy Hassick, a law associate professor at ASU, said from a lawyer’s perspective the commission provides a valuable service.
“If you’re going to have a retention system like we have in Arizona, this is a great start,” Hassick said. “Voters shouldn’t be voting completely blindly.”
He said it’s hard to tell what sort of impact the commission’s reviews have on voters, especially because it is so rare that a judge does not meet standards.
In the cases where a judge does not meet standards, however, he said voters would still probably vote to retain the judge.
“With these judges, you’re not voting for one judge or another, you’re just voting yes or no to retaining them,” Hassick said. “When you don’t know the alternative, there’s a little bit of a bias toward keeping them.”
The commission’s next step is getting the information out to a wider audience, he said.
“We want voters to make an informed decision, and that’s what the commission is trying to do,” he said.
Reach the reporter at ymgonzal@asu.edu
