Vote no on all the judges to fix Colorado’s incestuous, unethical mess? | BOILER | opinion

I urge people to vote against retaining judges in Colorado. Yes, all of them.

We don’t directly elect judges like other states where Republican and Democratic candidates face each other.

Instead, the governor appoints the state’s judges after a nominating committee brings him two or three to choose from. The only check and balance we mindless citizens have is to vote thumbs up or down on their retention from time to time. It can occasionally last up to a decade.

Apparently the problem is that 99.9% of the time all the justices are retained, usually by a two-thirds vote. It’s a rubber stamp, not responsibility. And except for the Denver Gazette, the media here does almost no original reporting on our third branch of government.

I vote no on all judges in the hope that at some point these retention elections can be competitive, and the judges have to defend their rulings to the simple, voting public.

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If you’re like me and think Colorado courts are too progressive and judges prefer to rewrite the law rather than interpret it, there’s an opposing argument for voting “yes” on all judge retention. The logic goes like this: If you somehow succeed in ousting a judge, it means Gov. Jared Polis will choose a more progressive replacement.

I find this argument unconvincing for the simple reason that judges almost never, ever lose their retainers. Also, if a couple of justices were to lose their seats, it could bump complacent justices into better decisions.

In my Blue Book this year, I found that the Judicial Performance Commissions have again said that every judge I can vote on “meets performance standards”. Like the children of the legendary Lake Wobegon, all Colorado judges are above average.

It is convenient, then, that many of the members of these judicial action commissions are appointed, in a glaring conflict of interest, by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could name the person who reviews your job performance?!

Moreover, they only review the superficial aspects of a judge’s job. Does it have a nice courtroom? Do you handle your cases well? Is he polite to those in front of him? Is it nice with kittens?

None of this says anything about his judicial philosophy, how he reads our laws and the constitution. Jimmy Carter was a very kind and polite president. But his policy decisions were the reason people voted against his re-election.

But this year, voting “no” is about more than just trying to make a point, especially with the Colorado Supreme Court justices.

Our Colorado Supreme Court has served itself in its lack of transparency and lack of discipline. The Denver Gazette’s David Migoya did the job Supreme Court justices didn’t do when he told the story of the high court’s pay-for-hush scandal. In other words, he made it public and transparent. But that was the job of the court!

Migoya broke the scandal in early 2021. The allegation is that the court offered a $2.5 million contract to Mindy Masias of the State Office of Court Administration to prevent revealed financial irregularities, sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior within the judiciary.

The court learned of the allegations in 2019, but did not openly acknowledge it until two years later, when the story broke. And who appoints many people to the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, which was created to investigate these allegations? You got it, the Colorado Supreme Court.

Although not as serious, it certainly has echoes of the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. This is what happens when an untouchable organization controls itself. And, even though the church is a private organization and we don’t vote for bishops, some of us still believe that government belongs to the people.

If you don’t vote against all the justices, you should at least vote against the Supreme Court justices who are retained. And like some, I said “some,” in the Catholic Church, Judges Brian Boatright, Monica Marquez, and Maria Berkenkotter were aware of the scandal and failed to fulfill their responsibility to report judicial misconduct as required.

Isn’t it great, then, that according to the Blue Book, everyone, every odd person who voted on the Judicial Performance Commission, agreed that all three judges “met performance standards”? No dissent.

Our system of evaluating, retaining, investigating and disciplining Colorado judges is an incestuous and unethical disaster.

Jon Caldara is president of the Denver Independence Institute and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays on Colorado Politics.