Order in the court election!

RALEIGH -- ******

CORRECTION

The Sept. 5 Point of View article "Order in the court!" reported an incorrect number of candidates who ran for Justice Robert Orr's vacant seat on the state Supreme Court in 2004. There were eight candidates, not six.

******

Thirteen is associated with bad luck, and for North Carolina voters, 13 candidates' filing for the state Court of Appeals vacancy recently created by Judge Jim Wynn's move to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is not merely bad luck - it's downright ridiculous.

This statewide election, to be held in just two months, will be a nonpartisan, bottom-of-the-ballot free-for-all. And to complicate the difficulty for voters, a new instant runoff voting (IRV) system will ask voters to rank their favorites for the seat. The results of this election method will kick in if no one gets a majority of votes cast - and with 13 candidates, rest assured that no one will even come close to a majority.

The circumstance of having vacancies for judgeships come open following the regular primary election isn't new. In 1986 I was appointed to a recently created vacancy on the state Court of Appeals, took office in September and had to run for election in November.

Needless to say, assuming the responsibilities of an appellate judge was daunting enough - but trying to throw together a statewide campaign for judicial office was virtually impossible. At least the system at that time resulted in only two of us being on the ballot in the general election.

The mess in which we now find ourselves, however, results from the state's shift from partisan to nonpartisan election of judges. In 1986, the November ballot for the vacancy I was filling was determined by the respective political parties' executive committees. Thus, I was nominated by the Republican Party, and Judge Eddie Greene was nominated by the Democratic Party. We squared off in November in a two-person race, winner take all.

Under today's system, voters will be faced with 13 names with no party identifications and an untested (in general elections) IRV method of finally determining who wins an eight-year term on our state's second-highest court.

A similar situation occurred in 2004, when I retired from the Supreme Court in July. Six candidates filed for my seat, and the winner, Justice Paul Newby, prevailed with approximately 24 percent of the vote.

Apparently, reformers concluded that the IRV system would save us from judges elected by a small plurality. It won't, but there are two key reforms that would restore a semblance of responsible order to the process of filling judicial vacancies occurring after the primaries are over.

The first is to revert to the system used for over a hundred years and let the political parties fill the slots on the ballot with individual nominees. Then those two candidates would run on a nonpartisan ballot in the general election. This change would eliminate the large field we are facing for the Wynn seat and would require only a statutory change.

The second reform would require a constitutional amendment but makes perfect sense when contemplating "good government" changes. Currently, a candidate to fill a judicial vacancy must run at the next general election. In many instances, the new judicial appointee is far more concerned with trying to win a statewide election than with settling in and learning the responsibilities of the job.

A simple change in the constitution would be to require an election for a judicial vacancy only after the appointee has served a minimum of two years. Such a requirement would give the governor's appointee time to engage in the work of the court and ultimately would give voters an opportunity to evaluate how good a job the judge is doing.

These two changes would eliminate a mass of candidates for these important judgeships on general election ballots and narrow the choice for voters, giving all of us a better opportunity to cast informed votes.

In all due respect to the 13 candidates running for Judge Wynn's seat, I have never heard of over half of the field. Of the ones whose names I have at least heard, there are only two for whom I could truthfully say I know something about their ability to do the work of the court.

I've been a lawyer for 35 years and a judge for 18 of those years. So if I don't know anything about these people, how can we expect the 1 million or 2 million citizens who will vote in November to have even the remotest idea about whom to vote for?