Need Help On How To Vote For San Diego Judges? Bar Association Offers Guidance

Speaker 1: 00:00 You may be confidently going through your sample ballot happily filling in the boxes for your chosen candidates until you hit a snag. What do you know about the people who are running to be judges on the San Diego County superior court? Probably not too much campaigns for judgeships tend to be low key affairs resulting in not much information for voters, but one group does what it can to offer some guidance. The San Diego County bar association evaluates the qualifications of judicial candidates and joining me is Joanna Schiavone, president of the San Diego County bar association. Joanna, welcome. Thank you for having me. Maureen. The bar association doesn't endorse candidates, but instead evaluates them. How does evaluating candidates differ from endorsing them? Sure. Maureen? Well, there are 11 candidates and there are four open seats, so they're fine for those seats in the March 3rd primary and because there is very little information available for voters. Speaker 1: 00:57 One of the things we do as the region's largest bar association legal association is we do provide neutral evaluations and it differs from an endorsement in that we don't take a position on candidates opposing one another. We simply look at an individual judicial candidate and we vet that candidate and evaluate them on 15 stated criteria. So in any given race, candidates could achieve the same evaluation. It's not an endorsement of one candidate over another. Give us an idea of how that vetting takes place. Who does it and water is some of these areas that you look at? The evaluation process is conducted by a committee. It's called our judicial elections evaluation committee. It's made up of 21 attorneys who are appointed to that committee. A number of them have served for many election cycles and this year there were seven new appointees to that committee and they evaluate based on 15 distinct criteria and I can discuss a couple of them. Speaker 1: 01:52 Sure. They're evaluating the candidates for bias and tolerance for their caseload management for compassion and understanding fairness and objectivity, integrity and honesty, judicial temperament, knowledge of the law and writing and research skills. So all the things we would want to see in a sitting judge. Those are the criteria that our committee evaluates in a candidate. And how do you find that information out about those nebulous kind of qualities that you're looking for? So what happens in the beginning after candidates have given their notice to the registrar voters that they're going to run, is that our committee sends all of the candidates who've been qualified for the ballot, sends them all a personal data questionnaire. And at that time they also all receive a list that includes all of the 21 members and they're invited to participate in this process. And so they are, they provide information to our committee, they provide references, they provide information about cases that they've handled and they also have a chance to indicate if they believe they have a conflict of interest with any member on the committee subsequent to that. Speaker 1: 02:59 So the committee takes that information directly from the candidates. The committee also provides an opportunity for members of the bar association and the public to provide information about the candidates. So we do that by having a questionnaire available on our website and distributed to our more than 10,000 members. Our members can then provide feedback on any specific candidates in those categories. I talked about and what are the different labels that the bar association gives to candidates after the evaluation? So the evaluations provide five different potential evaluations ranging from exceptionally qualified, well qualified, qualified, and lacking qualifications. There's also a category for unable to evaluate if a candidate does not participate in the process, the committee may still be able to gather enough information to provide an evaluation, but if they can't evaluate them, they will indicate unable to evaluate. Now two judicial candidates on the March ballot, Sean McMillan and Steve Miller were labeled as lacking qualifications. Speaker 1: 04:01 What is it that they are lacking that got them that rating? So Maureen, because the deliberations and evaluation process of the committee is entirely confidential. It's not actually something I'm privy to. The committee conducts for a variety of reasons, completely confidential evaluations. And that is so that they're neutral. And when it comes to the board of directors, we're evaluating whether or not the process was followed as outlined in our rules. But I'm not privy to the underlying deliberations and that's for a good reason. So that we can come up with neutral evaluations to educate the public. What do you think there's such little public information about these judicial candidates? You know, it's a really good question and given the power and influence the judges have in our community, I mean they are making life changing decisions every day in matters ranging from family law to criminal law, probate matters. Speaker 1: 04:50 It's something we want to raise the profile of those races so that there is more information available. The judicial races end up at the bottom of the ballot and there isn't. There is a large drop-off in voters actually voting in those races. So we are trying, the goal of our evaluations process is to educate voters, provide them with more information and empower them to make the choices in that election. Now the democratic and Republican parties sometimes endorse judicial candidates. Is that a problem considering the judges are supposed to be impartial? So one of the reasons that we do not endorse but we provide evaluations is, is that politics is not a criteria that we evaluate on. So whether or not political parties take a position on specific candidates is totally separate from what the San Diego County bar association does with its neutral evaluations. Now we've seen judges evaluated as lacking qualifications, actually elected to the bench. Speaker 1: 05:44 What are the implications for the community when something like that happens? We want voters to have confidence and community members to have confidence in their judicial officers. So one of the reasons the San Diego County bar association has for the last 40 years provided neutral evaluations is to help voters make educated choices because we want to increase access to justice and we want to stress the importance of the rule of law. And so we want judicial candidates to be prepared to, to exercise impartial judgment in cases. So that's really the goal is to educate the community so they can exercise that right to vote on those races. And so they can have the utmost confidence in who is elected. Is there a problem, a legal problem that you see if a person who is not qualified to be a judge gets elected as one? So there is a commission on judicial performance at the statewide commission that hears disputes about judges, but that's wholly separate from what we're trying to work on as a local County bar association. Speaker 1: 06:42 And so there are multiple ways that judicial performance can be reviewed. So voters again have the chance to go to the ballot box, either for incumbent judges or for open races. The four races that we have on the primary ballot this year are all open races. There are no incumbents running for those seats, but that's a check on the judicial office. And then if there is a problem with a specific judge, there is a statewide committee that evaluates performance and those issues can be dealt with there. I have been speaking with Joanna Schiavone, she's president of the San Diego County bar association. Joanna, thank you. Thank you, Maureen. You can find the bar associations evaluations at their website, SDC ba.org you can also find the judicial candidates statements included in the San Diego County sample ballot ad. For more information, you can check out the KPBS voter guide at kpbs.org/election.