This Novem­ber, vot­ers here in Wash­ing­ton and in oth­er states will be decid­ing more than just who they send to the 116th Con­gress and the next gath­er­ing of their state’s Leg­is­la­ture. They’ll also be deter­min­ing who sits on the bench in a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent courts, from State Supreme Court to Dis­trict and Munic­i­pal Court.

Unlike at the fed­er­al lev­el, judges pre­sid­ing over state and local courts don’t get on the bench exclu­sive­ly by appoint­ment and con­fir­ma­tion. Rather, they are elect­ed by vot­ers on the same bal­lots that exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive can­di­dates appear on.

While long­time vot­ers are well aware that state and local judi­cial posi­tions are sub­ject to elec­tion, many new vot­ers don’t know any­thing about vot­ing for judges. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, judi­cial con­tests often receive very lit­tle media cov­er­age. That makes cast­ing a vote for these posi­tions more dif­fi­cult than it should be.

This year in Wash­ing­ton, there are three Supreme Court posi­tions sub­ject to elec­tion. Although there were orig­i­nal­ly two can­di­dates for each posi­tion — an incum­bent and a chal­lenger — two of the chal­lengers were removed from the bal­lot due to hav­ing been dis­barred, so as a con­se­quence, there is only one posi­tion that is actu­al­ly being con­test­ed. That race, for Posi­tion #8, pits high­ly respect­ed Jus­tice Steve Gon­za­lez against admon­ished attor­ney Nathan Choi.

Choi unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought elec­tion last year to the Court of Appeals (Divi­sion 1, Dis­trict 1 — Judge Posi­tion 2). He was defeat­ed. Choi received 23.73% of the vote, while incum­bent Michael Spear­man received 76.27% of the vote.

This year, Choi has done hard­ly any cam­paign­ing or fundrais­ing, which has led many polit­i­cal observers to per­ceive that Choi sim­ply isn’t a threat to Gonzalez.

The mass media has like­wise paid the race scant atten­tion. Only a hand­ful of arti­cles about the Supreme Court race have been pub­lished since Fil­ing Week.

Jim Cam­den wrote a good sto­ry for the Spokesman-Review back in Sep­tem­ber; his col­league Jonathan Glover wrote a fol­low-up sto­ry a few days lat­er when Choi and Gon­za­lez debat­ed in front of the Spokane Rotary.

Pat Muir filed a report for the Yaki­ma Her­ald-Repub­lic (which was fol­lowed by an endorse­ment from the paper) and three oth­er dailies have pub­lished endorse­ments of the incum­bent jus­tices: The News Tri­bune, The Seat­tle Times, and The Columbian. The Stranger also gave Gon­za­lez a ring­ing endorse­ment.

That’s basi­cal­ly the extent of the media cov­er­age Gon­za­lez has received. A search of broad­cast tele­vi­sion and radio archives by NPI going back six­ty days yield­ed zero — yes, zero — results for either Gon­za­lez’s name or Choi’s name. (By con­trast, there were 2,007 results for Maria Cantwell and 760 results for Susan Hutchison.)

Jus­tice Steve Gon­za­lez asks a ques­tion dur­ing the McCleary case (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

From what we can tell, not a sin­gle sta­tion in either the Seat­tle, Port­land, Spokane, or Yaki­ma/Tri-Cities mar­kets has aired a sto­ry about the con­test for Posi­tion #8, which is a statewide con­test for a six-year term. It would appear that the pro­gram direc­tors work­ing at our North­west sta­tions have con­clud­ed there’s no race to cover.

But our research indi­cates that Gon­za­lez isn’t assured of cruis­ing to reelec­tion in a cake­walk, even though he is the only cred­i­ble can­di­date run­ning. When we polled on the race back in May, fol­low­ing Fil­ing Week, we found Choi six points ahead of Gon­za­lez, with a whop­ping three-fourths of respon­dents not sure.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked, and the responses:

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Posi­tion #8 this year are Nathan Choi and Steve Gon­za­lez. If the elec­tion was being held today, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Nathan Choi: 16%
• Steve Gon­za­lez: 10%
• Not sure: 74%

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and sev­en­ty-five like­ly 2018 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field May 22nd-23rd, 2018. The sur­vey used a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and online inter­views of cell phone only respon­dents. The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

When this data first came back five months ago, we were sur­prised to see such a high num­ber of respon­dents answer­ing “not sure”. Three out of four respon­dents picked that option. We were also sur­prised to see Choi ahead of Gonzalez.

Only one respon­dent out of ten said they were vot­ing for Gonzalez.

“Not sure” isn’t an option on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. But that does­n’t mean Gon­za­lez will win. He may be the only cred­i­ble can­di­date and the only can­di­date to have received favor­able rat­ings (or any rat­ings, for that mat­ter) from bar asso­ci­a­tions, but vot­ers won’t see that infor­ma­tion on their bal­lots. With infor­ma­tion about this con­test not wide­ly avail­able, many vot­ers may not be able to dis­tin­guish between the superb, mul­ti­lin­gual jurist and the admon­ished attorney.

NPI finds the lack of cov­er­age this race and oth­er judi­cial races have received to date extreme­ly alarm­ing. That’s why we’ve decid­ed to share this poll data.

We’d like to see more research con­duct­ed before the elec­tion to ascer­tain if vot­ers are famil­iar with the Supreme Court can­di­dates, and if they have a pref­er­ence. We hope the pub­li­ca­tion of this find­ing gal­va­nizes that research.

Nei­ther Gon­za­lez’s name nor Choi’s name were on the Top Two bal­lots vot­ed by the 1,753,545 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who cast bal­lots back in the sum­mer, so we do not have any data from the qual­i­fy­ing elec­tion Wash­ing­ton holds to com­pare these poll results to. This is because state law pro­vides that a Supreme Court race with few­er than three can­di­dates appears only on the gen­er­al elec­tion ballot.

It was­n’t always this way.

Years ago, state law allowed Supreme Court races to be decid­ed in the Top Two elec­tion. If any can­di­date received a major­i­ty, their opponent(s) were elim­i­nat­ed, and that can­di­date had the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot to them­selves. This is what hap­pened in 2012, the last time Gon­za­lez ran. He defeat­ed Bruce O. Daniel­son in the August Top Two and then was unop­posed in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion.

Although Gon­za­lez’s August 2012 mar­gin of vic­to­ry over Daniel­son was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly close, Gon­za­lez did­n’t win a sin­gle coun­ty east of the Cas­cade Moun­tains. He also did­n’t win any of the coun­ties in South­west Washington.

The new sys­tem is with­out a doubt bet­ter than the old sys­tem. Under the pre­vi­ous statute, Supreme Court races were effec­tive­ly being decid­ed in the Top Two as opposed to the gen­er­al elec­tion, when a lot more vot­ers participate.

How­ev­er, a side effect of the new statute is that a jus­tice like Steve Gon­za­lez does­n’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build name recog­ni­tion in the Top Two like a leg­isla­tive can­di­date would. In Wash­ing­ton, leg­isla­tive can­di­dates appear on the Top Two bal­lot regard­less of how much com­pe­ti­tion they have. They could be unop­posed, or have only one chal­lenger; it does­n’t mat­ter. Their names will still appear.

Incum­ben­cy is ordi­nar­i­ly a major elec­toral advan­tage, espe­cial­ly for a statewide posi­tion. But since jus­tices like Steve Gon­za­lez serve long six-year terms, receive min­i­mal expo­sure in the mass media dur­ing their tenure, and are restrict­ed in how and when they can cam­paign for reelec­tion by the Code of Judi­cial Con­duct, they may lack the name recog­ni­tion that their exec­u­tive depart­ment coun­ter­parts (who are also elect­ed statewide) would usu­al­ly enjoy at elec­tion time.

Gon­za­lez’s col­leagues appear to share our con­cern that many vot­ers might not be able to dis­tin­guish between him and his oppo­nent. Recent­ly, Jus­tice Mary Yu, one of Gon­za­lez’s col­leagues on the high court), authored an op-ed addressed to the Asian Amer­i­can Pacif­ic Islander com­mu­ni­ty titled: “When Vot­ing for Judges, Don’t Be Fooled by the Name — Vote for Jus­tice Steve Gonzalez”.

“An ‘Asian sound­ing’ name might be attrac­tive to our com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly if you do not have suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion about his lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions,” Yu wrote, refer­ring to Gon­za­lez’s chal­lenger. “But, please don’t be fooled by a name.”

Gon­za­lez has raised $322,105.31 for his reelec­tion to date (with over half that sum still unspent accord­ing to the most recent reports filed with the PDC), so he has the means with which to con­nect direct­ly with many vot­ers in these final days.

But not every vot­er will see a cam­paign’s paid ads.

Last week, bal­lots were mailed out to the vast major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s more than 4.2 mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers, with mil­i­tary and over­seas vot­ers hav­ing already been sent theirs last month. As of Mon­day after­noon, 51,158 bal­lots had come back to coun­ty audi­tors, with over 98% yet to be returned.

With most bal­lots still in vot­ers’ hands, now is the per­fect time for media and civic orga­ni­za­tions to shine a spot­light on judi­cial contests.

How about it, KOMO, KING, KIRO, KCPQ — can you spare some time on your upcom­ing news­casts to cov­er these judi­cial races?

It’s not just the Supreme Court con­test that needs atten­tion. I’ve dis­cussed it exten­sive­ly in this post, but there are also races for Supe­ri­or Court, Dis­trict Court, and Munic­i­pal Court in many juris­dic­tions. Here’s a list of posi­tions in Wash­ing­ton that have more than one can­di­date (and thus should be pri­or­i­tized for coverage):

• Judge of the Court of Appeals (Divi­sion 1, Dis­trict 3, Posi­tion #2)
• Grays Har­bor Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge #3
• Chelan Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge #2
• Chelan Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge #3
• Spokane Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge #10
• North­east Elec­toral Dis­trict (King Coun­ty) Judge #1
• Shore­line Elec­toral Dis­trict (King Coun­ty) Judge #1
• Cas­cade Dis­trict Court (Sno­homish Coun­ty) Judge #1
• Pierce Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #3
• Pierce Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #6
• Taco­ma Munic­i­pal Court Judge #3
• Spokane Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• Cowlitz Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• Cowlitz Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #2
• Cowlitz Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #3
• Ben­ton Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• Chelan Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #2
• Clal­lam Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• Clalam Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #2
• Mason Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge
• Stevens Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge
• Whit­man Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• Kitit­tas Low­er Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge
• Dou­glas Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge
• Jef­fer­son Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge #1
• San Juan Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge
• Garfield Coun­ty Dis­trict Court Judge

The recent pro­ceed­ings in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate regard­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of Brett Kavanaugh have remind­ed us how impor­tant the judi­cia­ry is.

The courts real­ly mat­ter, and not just at the fed­er­al level.

In the past three weeks alone, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court ruled that the death penal­ty as has been applied is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and fol­lowed that up by hold­ing that life sen­tences for youth are also unconstitutional.

Those were land­mark deci­sions that will pro­found­ly affect our state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem (and for the bet­ter, I might add).

The cas­es that reach the high court are usu­al­ly first lit­i­gat­ed in a tri­al court, and those courts are no less impor­tant. Vot­ers get to decide who sits on the Supe­ri­or Court bench in many juris­dic­tions this year too. And final­ly, there are the Dis­trict and Munic­i­pal Courts, which are the courts cit­i­zens are most like­ly to inter­act with, as they han­dle cas­es of dri­ving under the influ­ence and civ­il traf­fic infractions.

Long ago, a deci­sion was made that judges around these parts should be elect­ed, and we still have that sys­tem. Whether or not it makes sense to keep it is a dis­cus­sion for anoth­er day. At present, there’s an elec­tion going on, and vot­ers could real­ly use more infor­ma­tion about the judi­cial con­tests on their ballots.

We’ll try to do our part here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate by cov­er­ing as many judi­cial races as we can between now and Novem­ber 6th. We hope oth­er media orga­ni­za­tions and civic orga­ni­za­tions will do the same.

POSTSCRIPT: Read­ers can expect a post here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate about the Court of Appeals con­test in Divi­sion 1 by the end of this week.