Did my civic duty and voted against one of the three judges up for retention with no real expectation that he'll get kicked to the curb, but he doesn't deserve retention and it made me feel better to vote against him.

The thing about digging deep into research for judgeship races is that often you find really good people working hard in very difficult circumstances. It's a rough job! Not only does it require a lot of brainwork and a lot of balancing of very tough questions, but you need excellent management skills and an ability to project authority -

Really good room management skills

but then you find stuff like this judge's formal opinion! Holding! that a defendant whose judge had fallen asleep in court and did not wake the first several times he was called did not deserve a new trial bc it was obvious he was guilty anyway and it didn't matter that much.

I've been mad about this ever since I read about it. wth. wth. wth.

so voting against him made me feel mildly better

(another judge up for retention has a LOT of people who hate him, but given that a. they all seem to be people he has ruled against in family court and b. as far as I can tell from names and such they seem to be all genders and races, I think it's probably not that he's a bad judge, just that our family court system is really painful and hard.)

and score: early polling place was in fact the public library, so I picked up a hold I was excited for after the vote!

Your deep research and care is impressive. Well done.

wow, excellent read of the room there, chad

uh. wow.

(what was this person doing, trawling plurk for election stuff?)