DENVER — In addition to casting a vote for president, Congress and various propositions, Colorado voters also have to decide whether to retain judges, from state Supreme Court justices to county-level judges.
“I think it's important to feel like you're participating in the process,” said Kent Wagner, the executive director of the Colorado Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation (OJPE), which manages the process for evaluating Colorado’s judges. “We evaluate them on an ongoing basis."
Commissions made up of mostly non-attorneys conduct the evaluations in the state’s 22 judicial districts. Wagner said every judge in Colorado is evaluated using six criteria — integrity, legal knowledge, communication skills, administrative performance, judicial temperament and service to the legal profession.
“They do interviews with the judge. They look at survey reports. We survey people who have been in the judge's courtroom, compile a lot of data on that,” said Wagner.
Of the 116 judges up for retention this year, 115 met performance standards, according to OJPE.
The evaluations are summarized in the Blue Book to help voters decide whether to retain a judge. Additional information, including the full reports about each judge, can be found at KnowYourJudge.com.
"It's important that the judges reflect the preferences of the communities that they serve,” said Russ Carparelli, a former Colorado Court of Appeals judge who is now retired.
While it might be tempting for voters to skip the judicial section of the ballot, they shouldn't, according to Carparelli.
"If for no other reason than to become aware of the quality of the people that serve on Colorado's bench,” he said.
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A lot of voters, however, are skipping the judicial section. Results from the 2020 election in Colorado show a noticeable difference in the number of votes cast for president compared to the retention of state Supreme Court justices. Even though both were on the ballots of every Colorado voter, about 3.2 million votes were cast for president, while only 2.7 million votes were cast in the section concerning the retention of state Supreme Court justices.
It was the same story at the county level. In Denver, for instance, 398,000 votes were cast that year. While 393,000 people voted for president, only 304,000 voted in the section concerning the retention of county judges. Propositions on the ballot that year also received more votes than the judicial retention section.
The Judicial Integrity Project, which seeks to improve Colorado’s judicial system, said because the evaluations don’t include information like discipline or criminal histories of judges, voters are left without critical information.
“When judges are evaluated in Colorado, the evaluation process is decidedly weighted in favor of the judges under review,” the group writes on its website. “The judiciary and the public would benefit from more thorough, credible evaluations.”
But Judge Carparelli said the process is still a good one.
“We have an extraordinary bench, an excellent bench,” said Carparelli. "And it is really admired around the country for the process that we use.”
Jeff Rupp with the Colorado Judicial Institute, which seeks to educate the public about Colorado’s judicial system, said it’s critical for voters to do their part in helping decide who sits on the bench.
“Democracy is hard work,” said Rupp. “We need to do our homework, and it's our civic duty to vote. This is our chance."
From 1990 to 2018, Colorado voters have voted to retain 99% of judges who were up for retention, according to OJPE.
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