The Partisan Election of Judges in Texas
In a recent Atlantic interview, former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson described why Texans prefer to elect their judges: The general idea is that judges ought to be accountable. They'll say, "What if the judge is lazy or corrupt or doesn't have the intellect to do the job? Shouldn't the voters have an opportunity to take them out of office?" . . . [But] the truth is that this notion of accountability doesn't work because the voters don't know the judges and they can't be expected to know the judges. In your free time one day, take a look at the ballot in Harris County—that's Houston—in a presidential year. If you look at that ballot, there will be several pages of judges who are standing for election, from the Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals ... There are district court judges, county court judges, probate judges, municipal court judges. In that one year in Harris County, there are probably 60 or 70 judges ...