Vote no on all judges to fix Colorado's incestuous, unethical mess?

By Jon Caldara

• Oct 20, 2024

  from Colorado Politics

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

We do not directly elect judges as other states do where Republican and Democrat candidates face off.

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 meaningless citizens have is to vote thumbs up or down on their retention every so often. Every so often can be as long as a decade.

The problem is seemingly 99.9% of the time the judges are all retained, usually with around a two-third vote in favor. It’s a rubber stamp, not accountability. And except for the Denver Gazette, the media here does almost no original reporting of our third branch of government.

I vote no on all judges in the hopes at some point these retention elections might become competitive, and judges must defend their rulings to we simpletons, the voting public.

If you’re like me and believe Colorado courts are too progressive and judges prefer to rewrite law rather than interpret it, there is a fair opposite argument to instead vote “yes” on all judge retentions. The logic goes like this: If you are somehow successful in kicking a judge out, it means Gov. Jared Polis will just choose a more progressive replacement.

I find this argument unconvincing for the simple reason judges almost never, ever lose their retentions. Furthermore, if a couple judges did lose their seats, it could shock complacent judges into better rulings.

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

Convenient then that many of the members of this Commissions on Judicial Performance are appointed — in a glaring conflict of interest — by the Colorado Supreme Court.

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

Additionally, they only review the superficial aspects of a judge’s job. Does he run a nice courtroom? Does he move his cases along well? Is he polite to those who come in front of him? Is he nice to kittens?

None of this says anything about his judicial philosophy, how he reads our laws and constitution. Jimmy Carter was an exceedingly nice and polite president. But his policy decisions were why people voted against his reelection.

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

Our Colorado Supreme Court has been self-serving in its lack of transparency and lack of discipline. The Denver Gazette’s David Migoya did the work the Supreme Court justices failed to do when he broke the story of the high court’s pay-for-silence scandal. That is, he made it public and transparent. But that was the court’s job!

Migoya broke the scandal in early 2021. The allegation is the court offered a $2.5 million contract to Mindy Masias, from the State Court Administrator’s Office, to prevent her from disclosing financial irregularities, sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviors within the judiciary.

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

Though not nearly as serious it certainly has echoes of the Catholic Church scandals of sexual abuse. This is what happens when an untouchable organization polices themselves. And, though the church is a private organization and we don’t vote on bishops, some of us still believe the government is of the people.

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

Isn’t it nifty then that, as per the Blue Book, everyone, every single freakin’ person who voted on the Judicial Performance Commission agreed all three justices “meet performance standards”? No dissent.

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

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