By Tom Campbell 

I don’t know Allison Riggs or Jefferson Griffin and I’m willing to wager you don’t either. But for more than a month they have been involved in an election kerfuffle that has prevented our elections from being finalized.

In November’s Supreme Court Judicial election, almost 184,000 fewer voters cast a ballot for Supreme Court Justices than voted for the president. Why? One reason may be that judicial elections come almost at the end of our already too long ballot and voters gave up before the end. But a more plausible explanation is that these voters didn’t have a clue about either candidate and decided not to vote.

Democrat Allison Riggs initially had a 734-vote margin over opponent Jefferson Griffin, perhaps another tell that voters couldn’t differentiate between the two. Griffin asked for a recount. Riggs still won. Griffin asked for another recount. A partial count of selected districts actually gave Riggs an additional 14 votes. Then, taking a page from the Republican playbook, Griffin requested that 60,000 of those votes be disqualified.

Once again, the entire episode demonstrates why North Carolina’s process for selecting judges is sheer folly.  

Survey after survey has revealed that voters know practically nothing about the judicial candidates on their ballot, especially appellate-level judges. The State Board of Elections publishes a flyer that contains the picture and credentials of statewide judicial candidates and mails it free to registered voters. Obviously, voters don’t take the time to read it.

On the other hand, surveys have also demonstrated that North Carolinians aren’t willing to give up their right to vote on judges. Get the picture? Voters don’t know who is running, yet they aren’t willing to give up their right to vote for these people they don’t know. Make sense to you?

Our goal should be to have the best jurists possible passing judgment in our justice system. We can never be assured of this if we continue to elect judges.

If you or someone you loved was involved in a court case — either as a defendant or plaintiff — would you want the verdict decided by someone on the bench because voters, who didn’t know anything about them, just used an eenie-meenie-miney-mo method for selecting for whom they would vote? Or worse yet, because that person belonged to a certain political party? I submit you would want the assurance that the person sitting in judgement was someone who knew the law, had experience dealing with such matters and had a record making wise decisions in administering justice.

We’ve known for decades that our system for selecting judges was not conducive to having the best qualified men and women on the bench. The issue has been discussed many times over the years and North Carolina has actually come close to reforming judicial selection, but each time it appeared we were getting close to reform the legislative session would end and the issue wasn’t raised in the next session. Or perhaps some powerful political force would raise objections and the movement would die. None of this alters the fact that a better solution for judicial selection is needed.

In hopes of opening such a discussion, please allow some observations, understanding this is not an inconsequential nor simple problem to tackle. North Carolina has more than 400 judges including, seven Supreme Court Justices, 15 judges on the Court of Appeals, 107 Superior Court Judges and 273 District Court judges, each with different responsibilities. They are divided into 48 judicial districts, the number of Superior Court districts.

Here is an inescapable and undebatable point: politicians need to be excluded from the process. Not only will they skew the outcome to partisan interests but there is every likelihood they will debate and delay, with little or nothing resolved. Justice will not be better served. Lawmakers will have the opportunity to give an up or down vote to the final solution.

North Carolina needs some kind of merit-based selection process from top to bottom. Selecting 400-plus judges is such a large task that it will require more than one group, no matter how qualified. Since we have multiple judicial districts, it would make sense that we break down the state into more manageable districts, understanding that those closest to the place where court is held will know more about qualifications of those being selected. And statewide judges might be best judged by people who have that statewide perspective.

Wiser people than I can debate and decide how the selection groups are chosen, as well as many other details in the process.

How many more times will we be forced to deal with situations like we currently face, situations that chip away at the trust and confidence people have in North Carolina’s justice system? There’s got to be a better way and we need to find it.

Nothing will change if we do not begin.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965. Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com