Pros and cons of straight-ticket voting
Consider qualifications, experience, action, then vote for judges on their merits, not on party affiliation alone
In 1982 I was a young lawyer with an active trial practice in the Harris County civil district courts. I knew all of the judges and respected each of them, but I also recognized that some were better judges than others. There were good Democratic judges and bad Democratic judges; good Republican judges and bad Republican judges. Party affiliation bore no apparent connection with the quality of the judging.
In November of that year most of the Republican judges whose terms were about to expire were denied re-election, not only the bad ones but many of the good ones as well. The reason? Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen defeated his Republican challenger, and Democrat Mark White defeated Republican Gov. Bill Clements. A large percentage of their voters cast “straight-party tickets,” effectively voting not only for Bentsen and White but also for all other Democratic candidates, including all of the Democratic judicial nominees. It was a Democratic sweep.
Two years later it happened again, but this time the shoe was on the other foot. Republican President Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide, receiving nearly 64 percent of the popular vote in Texas. Many of those votes came from those choosing to vote straight Republican tickets, the effect of which, of course, was to deny incumbent Democratic judges, both the good ones and the bad ones, re-election. This time it was a Republican sweep.
Having seen the consequences for the judiciary of electing judges on the basis of who was at the top of the ticket, I decided that I should do something to make it somewhat more likely that good judges, and good judicial candidates, received the electoral support they deserved. As did many others, both lawyers and non-lawyers, I began sending recommendations in contested judicial races to my friends and acquaintances. In advance of each election in which judges are on the ballot, I compile a list of the candidates, indicating which candidate I prefer in each race. When I consider my less preferred candidate nevertheless to be qualified, I note that. Over time, I have added additional information that bears on a candidate’s qualifications, like State Bar of Texas and Houston Bar Association poll results and endorsements by the Houston Chronicle. But I have never based my recommendations on party affiliation and routinely, but subtly, urge those on my list to refrain from voting straight-party tickets.
Voting a straight-party ticket undermines the quality of our elected judiciary because party affiliation is far less significant in judicial races than in other contested elections. Unlike candidates for executive and legislative offices, whose party affiliation often signals fairly reliably the policies that the candidates would pursue if elected, judicial candidates’ party affiliations say relatively little about how they would perform their duties as judges. Painting with a very broad brush, one could argue that Democratic judicial candidates tend to be somewhat liberal and that Republican candidates tend to be somewhat conservative, but even if that turns out to be true for any given candidate, it says relatively little about how good a judge that person would be. Good judges understand and follow the law, are fair to all parties who appear before them, work hard and exhibit good judicial temperaments. Bad judges don’t. Intelligence and discipline, fairness, diligence and temperament are neither uniquely Democratic nor Republican characteristics.
Moreover, the job of a judge is fundamentally different from that of executive and legislative officials. When a voter assesses the performance of the latter in deciding whether to reelect them, he or she typically asks whether the actions taken by an executive or the votes cast by a legislator were consistent with the voter’s personal policy preferences. But since judges don’t make policy, their performance cannot be assessed on that basis. Rather, the relevant assessment question is whether the judge did his or her job, which is akin to assessing whether a school teacher, or a welder or an accountant did the job that he or she was hired to do. The only way to make a fair assessment of whether a judge should be elected to another term is to base one’s vote on the judge’s qualifications and performance. Voting a straight-party ticket prevents that from happening,
Sadly, the problem with straight-party-ticket voting that I identified after the 1982 and 1984 elections has gotten worse. In the 1980s, 10–15 percent of Texas voters cast ballots for at least one Democratic judicial candidate and at least one Republican judicial candidate; theother 85–90 percent voted a straight-party ticket in judicial races. Over time, though, as our politics have grown more polarized, the percentage of swing voters in judicial races has fallen to between 3 and 4 percent. Increasingly, the fate of good judges, whether Democratic or Republican, depends almost entirely on factors that have nothing to do with qualifications and performance.
When I vote in the upcoming general election, I will be picking and choosing among the judicial candidates and almost certainly voting for some Democrats and some Republicans. I hope that many of my fellow Harris County citizens do the same.