Around four out of five like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are unsure who they’ll be sup­port­ing in this year’s con­test­ed State Supreme Court races, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est statewide poll has found.

Asked whether they would vote for incum­bents G. Helen Whiten­er (for Posi­tion #6) and Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis (for Posi­tion #3), or their chal­lengers Richard Serns and David Lar­son, the vast major­i­ty of respon­dents said they were not sure. The fig­ure of unde­cid­ed vot­ers was 81% for the race for Posi­tion #6 (Whiten­er vs. Serns) and 78% for Posi­tion #3 (Mon­toya-Lewis vs. Larson).

13% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed a pref­er­ence for Jus­tice Whiten­er for Posi­tion #6 and 6% indi­cat­ed a pref­er­ence for Whiten­er’s oppo­nent, Serns.

14% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed a pref­er­ence for Jus­tice Mon­toya-Lewis for Posi­tion #3 and 8% indi­cat­ed a pref­er­ence for Mon­toya-Lewis’ oppo­nent Larson.

Our sur­vey of 1,070 like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, May 19th through Wednes­day, May 20th, 2020.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respondents.

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

The full text of our ques­tion in the race for Posi­tion #3 and the answers were:

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Posi­tion #3 this year are David Lar­son and Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis. If the elec­tion were held today, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• David Lar­son: 8%
• Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis: 14%
• Not sure: 78%

And for Posi­tion #6:

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Posi­tion #6 this year are G. Helen Whiten­er and Richard S. Serns. If the elec­tion were held today, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• G. Helen Whiten­er: 13%
• Richard S. Serns: 6%
• Not sure: 81%

The results for these races are sim­i­lar to NPI’s 2018 State Supreme Court find­ing from two years ago, when we asked like­ly vot­ers whether they pre­ferred the excep­tion­al­ly well qual­i­fied Jus­tice Steven Gon­za­lez or his oppo­nent, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Nathan Choi. In that sur­vey, 74% of vot­ers said they were not sure, while 16% pre­ferred Choi and only 10% pre­ferred Gonzalez.

At the time we released our 2018 find­ing, we expressed our deep con­cern that vot­ers might open up their bal­lots with­out hav­ing heard much about the can­di­dates. We asked oth­er media out­lets to step up and join us in cov­er­ing the race. Sev­er­al reporters respond­ed and rose to the occa­sion, notably pub­lic radio’s Austin Jenk­ins and KIRO7’s Essex Porter. Their report­ing that autumn was instru­men­tal in help­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans make an informed decision.

Jus­tice Gon­za­lez ulti­mate­ly received 67.58% of the vote in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion, win­ning reelec­tion in a land­slide and car­ry­ing every coun­ty in the state.

The result was a val­i­da­tion of the impor­tance of ele­men­tal polit­i­cal reporting.

As judi­cial can­di­dates, Choi and Gon­za­lez appeared on the bal­lot with no par­ty des­ig­na­tion or oth­er infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, mak­ing it hard for any­one with­out a firm grasp of Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics to eas­i­ly tell them apart.

Con­tests for exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive posi­tions in Wash­ing­ton are typ­i­cal­ly par­ti­san, whether at the state or coun­ty lev­el, but all judi­cial posi­tions are non­par­ti­san. What’s more, judi­cial can­di­dates are restrict­ed in terms of how they may cam­paign by the Code of Judi­cial Con­duct.

A judge or jus­tice may be well known to mem­bers of the bar, but the same does not hold true for the gen­er­al pub­lic. This lack of aware­ness in judi­cial elec­tions is a recur­ring issue that we have to deal with every year, for Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are tasked with decid­ing who should sit on the bench at mul­ti­ple lev­els… munic­i­pal court, dis­trict court, Supe­ri­or Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court.

Jus­tices Whiten­er and Mon­toya-Lewis end­ed up on the Supreme Court through the process of appoint­ment; the depar­ture of their pre­de­ces­sors mid-term cre­at­ed vacan­cies that Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee had the respon­si­bil­i­ty of fill­ing, and his office took that respon­si­bil­i­ty extreme­ly seri­ous­ly. How­ev­er, it’s the vot­ers who will decide who ought to serve on the Court over the long haul.

Full terms on the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court are for six years, so the result of a Supreme Court race is pret­ty consequential.

A grand total of four seats on the Court are up for elec­tion this year.

Incum­bent Jus­tices Debra Stephens (cur­rent­ly the Chief Jus­tice) and Charles W. John­son did not draw any chal­lengers, so they will remain in office.

That leaves two con­test­ed posi­tions: the afore­men­tioned races between Whiten­er and Serns and between Mon­toya-Lewis and Larson.

It’s cru­cial that vot­ers know who these can­di­dates are and what their qual­i­fi­ca­tions are so they can make an informed deci­sion this fall.

Wash­ing­ton State’s media out­lets are among the few orga­ni­za­tions that are in a posi­tion to address the lack of aware­ness in judi­cial elections.

By car­ing about the Supreme Court races, talk­ing to the can­di­dates, and putting togeth­er sto­ries for vot­ers’ ben­e­fit, pub­lish­ers in the Ever­green State can pro­vide a crit­i­cal pub­lic ser­vice dur­ing this his­toric pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year.

We appre­ci­ate that this is a tough time for peo­ple work­ing in jour­nal­ism; the pan­dem­ic is neg­a­tive­ly affect­ing the work of many newsrooms.

But we’ll all be bet­ter off if these races get the cov­er­age they deserve.

We’re com­mit­ted to doing our part to cre­at­ing that cov­er­age, and we hope oth­er media orga­ni­za­tions will join us. We plan on check­ing in on these Supreme Court races again this autumn, and hope­ful­ly, when our next sur­vey comes back, we will find a small­er num­ber of vot­ers who are not sure as to their choice.

And this sum­mer, you can expect to see a Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate series pro­fil­ing 2020 judi­cial can­di­dates, includ­ing — but not lim­it­ed to! — our Supreme Court hopefuls.