New York Times: NY Judicial Election Process is a SHAM (MORE, CLICK HERE)

It will be a happy, happy Year if the corruptive judicial election process in New York, and as discussed in a New York Times October 2, 2007 Editorial, is finally addressed. That editorial is worth repeating, and rereading.........MORE.......

Real Judicial Elections
The New York Times - Editorial
October 2, 2007

The United States Supreme Court hears arguments tomorrow in a challenge to New York’s undemocratic method of electing its Supreme Court judges. A federal appeals court ruled that the process, a relic of the era of clubhouse politics, infringes on the constitutional rights of voters and candidates. The Supreme Court should affirm that well-reasoned decision.

New York’s Supreme Court judges — who are trial-level judges, not members of the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals — are nominated through an archaic system of judicial conventions. These conventions are dominated by delegates handpicked by party bosses, who vote however the bosses tell them.

Independent candidates for judge have virtually no chance of bucking the system. To win the nomination, a candidate who is not backed by the bosses may need to recruit more than 100 delegate candidates to run in different districts. Those candidates would have to collect thousands of petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. If they did qualify, they would need to do an enormous education campaign, because their names appear on the ballot with no identification, so there is no way for ordinary voters to make an informed choice among them.

The judicial conventions themselves are an empty exercise. More than 96 percent of the nominations are uncontested. Absentee rates range as high as 69 percent. They often take, from beginning to end, as little as 20 minutes. When Margarita López Torres, the Brooklyn-based judge who is challenging the system, asked to attend a convention so she could make her case to the delegates, she was told that candidates were not allowed.

In other words, the whole process is a sham. It has the trappings of democracy, but it is not democratic at all. Candidates who want to be elected to a New York State Supreme Court judgeship have no way, short of being given the nod by the bosses, to compete for the voters’ favor. The voters have no real hope of having their votes make a difference in the election.

The New York-based United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rightly ruled that this system of non-elections infringed on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of association because it denied candidates and voters “a realistic opportunity to participate in the nominating process.”

In defending the system, New York State argues that the role of political parties in elections must be respected. In this case, however, it is New York State’s law that is trampling on the parties — unless you consider party membership confined to the back room. The law forces the parties to choose their judicial nominees through a Byzantine system that ensures that their actual members, the voters, do no more than rubber-stamp the decisions that are actually left up to the party bosses.

An expert witness for the defendants in this case conceded that New York’s system of selecting judges was “designed” so “the political leadership of the party is going to designate the party’s candidates.” That might work well for the bosses, but it is bad for democracy and inconsistent with the political rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.