Judges on the Ballot!

With the upcoming election I find that of the few people who do vote, (this country now has a terrible voting record, so many people bitch about whats going on in their local offices, state offices and the federal government but few vote) there are some areas that people skim right through with very little thought of how they are voting, one of these is when you get to the yes no votes on judges.



So many people think that deciding on the judges who are going to oversee the legal codes in this land is above them, that they don't have the proper legal knowledge to even try and get involved in this aspect of government.



I want to take the time to tell you if you are one who thinks this way, to remember these people sitting on the bench make first and most important life and death decisions, much of their time sitting on the bench is reviewing criminal cases, especially if you are in a state with the death penalty. In California it is the law that every case where a defendant is found guilty and given the death penalty the California Supreme Court must review that case. Now let me just say I agree with the death penalty whole heatedly, I believe if you are such a terrible human being as to take anther's life, this is the only way to pay your debt to society. However every month you hear about an inmate who was executed years ago and now new evidence has been found pointing to the inmates innocence, so I don't think the death penalty should be rubber stamped as it was years ago. Today's judges must look at death penalty cases intensely, and I believe that any inmate who was not convicted by eye witness testimony or DNA should have their penalty's reduced to life. With out either of those two requirements a mistake could be highly likely.

Here is one of the most important points on deciding on who is sitting on the bench, today you hear many complaints where voters have passed a new law or updated a standing one already on the books and someone sues the state or nation saying the law is un-constitutional.

The perfect example of this is California's Prop. 8 California voters voted amend their constitution stating that legal marriage is only that between a man and a woman. On 04 Aug 2010 Judge Vaughn R. Walker declared Prop. 8 unconstitutional. From that day on many California voters are questioning why they should care and vote about what is placed on the ballot since some "fricken" judge will come out and say it doesn't matter what the voter thinks.

Now the subject of why you should vote or not is a topic for another post, the important aspect pertaining to the point of this blog post is that everyone of us who are registered to vote in California had a say in wether Judge Walker should be sitting on the bench in the first place. Who is sitting on the bench is more important today than ever before, because despite how we vote it is these judges and their political views that decide how we live our everyday lives.

Now you are probably sitting there right now say, um wait a second Duane, judge appointments are non-political and when you do vote on them they don't even list a political party on the ballot. True originally our founding fathers made the position of judges a appointed office to keep politics out of the picture, but it has never worked. Every one of us has and oppion and a belief about all aspects of our lives and public policy, and this includes judges. I've never heard of a judge that was not a member of a party and did not sit on one side of an issue or not and although they are only suppose to use their unbiased research regarding the constitution to make these decisions, they would not be human if they did not let personal beliefs become involved somewhere.

So before election time gets here, sit down with you voter information literature, and think about your values and what you believe and sit down and see where the judges sit in line with how you feel. Look at their pass desecion records and go from there, if they have made desecions in the past that don't sit good with your beliefs and moral standing walk into those polls ready to mark No where it says should judge so and so sit at the California Supreme Court, District Court of Appeals or your local municipal courts. Be informed and make your vote count and not what a judge in his or her flowing robes my think.