...K P F T news

LEAD-IN BY HOST DAVID STILES: Tuesday, half a million people in Harris County cast ballots for the state's top office holders, a bond issue, and dozens of judicial races at the bottom of the ballot. The results were no surprise to some observers, but one interesting development is the agreement of three divergent camps of political thought that the current system of electing judges is a bad idea. Robert Cardenas reports:

STORY: Houston's most competitive Democratic judicial candidate, a non-profit group advocating reform in the legal system, and the state's top Republican judicial office holder, all find fault with how judges are being elected in Texas.

Judicial elections have been held in Texas since the mid-1800s. Until 1972, the Harris County judicial election system required expensive filing fees in order for a potential candidate to run for judge. Three-time democratic judicial candidate, an attorney with 30 years experience in the Harris County court system, Robert Hinojosa, explains:

"When I first started practicing, there were no judicial elections because we had a system designed to protect incumbents. If there was ever any opposition, the filing fees were so large, nobody could afford to run against him. So you never saw a sitting judge being opposed. And all sitting judges resigned during their last term of office, rather than retiring and letting the voters fill their seats. They don't retire so the incumbent governor can appoint their replacement."

This filing system was challenged in the courts, and candidates are now required to pay $2,000 to get their names on the ballot.

But, Hinojosa also finds problems in the current system of electing judges:

"It is not the qualifications of the individual candidates that count. It hardly counts at all, it is simply the top of the ticket. The top of the ticket controls the judicial races, it has done so in every single year since 1980, and of course all of those have been Republican years except one, which was 1982."

Citizens for Lawsuit abuse, is a legal watchdog group with over 7500 supporters in the Houston area. Executive Director, Jon Opelt agrees with Hinajosa that the current model of selecting judges could be better.

"We need to remove this perception of impropriety if Texas were to appoint judges and make an effort in screening out the very best candidates and encouraging them to serve."

Opelt suggests that if the goal is to increase the quality of judges, a panel could be created to develop a list of those with the highest qualifications for the governor to choose from.

"That committee could be made up of lawyers and lay people and judges. It could be a bi-partisan committee made up of Republicans and Democrats and Independents where a review of candidates is done, or actually a recruitment of candidates that say, you know based upon your knowledge of the law and your time in life, perhaps this might be a good time to consider a position on the bench if you were so selected."

Texas has a nine member supreme court that hears its civil cases. All nine judges are Republican. Chief Justice Tom Phillips is nationally recognized advocate of a merit selection system for electing judges:

"Outside of the Texas judicial system, there's a real blackeye for this state ..."
Cardenas: Why's that?
"Well they believe that the rough and tumble politics which started here about 20 years ago in judicial races has now spread to other places in the nation. It comprpomises the appearance of judgesa as mutual scholars and arbitrors of the law."

Phillips says its better if judges have to run on their records - something difficult to do under the current system, especially in counties like Harris, where there are a high number of races.

"As long as the judges are running for office, they have to have contributions in order to have an educated electorate. There's not much free media for judges. But I think it's a bad system that requires judges to go out and seek this money, and requires citizens to donate it to them."

Instead, Phillips along with Robert Hinajosa and John Opelt of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, all agree that one of the best ways to fix the Texas judicial system would be to implement a merit selection process: a plan that has been fully adapted in Missouri, and to some degree in over 30 other states. Phillips explains:

"In no state that has ever adopted that Missouri plan has abandoned it. In other words, once it is adopted they have kept it. And most people outside of the Texas judicial system, there's a real blackeye for this state."

Robert Cardenas, KPFT News, Houston

E-mail Robert Cardenas at News@kpft.org .