Monday, November 3, 2008

Our judges: Take em or leave em

I'm working on your ? about the judges PP-- it took forever to find a sample ballot!
... if you look up your eligibility here, it gives you the option to download one.

... so Deborah Eyler and Robert Zarnoch.
Zarnoch: O'M appointed him, and he was working with the General Assembly prior. He argued against marriage equality.

Deborah Eyler: she lives in Annapolis, was appointed by PG, sports a Tipper Gore hairdo & gave $500 to Obama. Here's some of her ops from the MD courts blog.

6 comments:

ppatin said...

I was wondering if The Baltimore Cynic would see that question. He seems to be pretty well informed about Maryland's judiciary. Of course, in the end I'm sure my vote won't matter since no Maryland appellate judge has ever lost a retention election, but I feel bad voting for judges while knowing so little about them.

ppatin said...

Zarnoch may not necessarily be against gay marriage, however in his capacity as counsel to the General Assembly I assume that it was his job to defend this state's laws regardless of how he felt about them.

Cham said...

Yeah, a judge is supposed to uphold the law, his personal views shouldn't matter. It's really how well these judges have done their job and the decisions they've made.

The Supreme Court is another matter entirely though, because those judges don't give a hoot about the constitution and vote with their gut.

Smalltimore said...

I hate the idea of voting for judges. If we had anything approaching educated politics anywhere, maybe. But there is so much to the law and its interpretation that goes right over the heads of the electorate, myself included. Do we want to encourage judges to be more active in deciding legislation? I am happy to cede this selection to the Gov and GA.

After blowing that bit of wind, I suggest Patin find an organization he agrees with (NRA, NARAL, whatever) and see who they are endorsing.

ppatin said...

smalltimore:

I'm pretty sure that Court of Special Appeals retention elections are so unimportant that no major political groups even bother to issue endorsements. The best suggestion I heard was that since they're essentially guaranteed to be retained I might as well vote no, since a few no votes will keep them on their toes.

ppatin said...

BTW, I agree that it's foolish to elect judges. At least Maryland's system for retaining appellate judges is better than in some states where you actually have partisan candidates running against each other...