Arizona voters will choose whether to retain 69 judges up for retention election this fall, the bulk from the Maricopa County Superior Court.
The Arizona Sun Times worked with a team of researchers and insiders, including grassroots activist Linda Busam, to produce a report informing voters on the partisan leanings and contentious decisions from 48 of those judges. Voters angry with judges who found ways to dismiss election lawsuits challenging corruption in the 2020 and 2022 elections have vowed to boot those judges out of office. County officials begin mailing early ballots on October 9.
Only four of Arizona’s 15 counties hold retention elections for judges, along with the Arizona Supreme Court and Arizona Court of Appeals. The judges are initially appointed by the governor and then run for retention every few years. In contrast, superior court judges in the remaining 11 counties must run for election initially, and they are not appointed in every election after that.
Critics of the retention election system contend that since the judges don’t initially run for office, no one learns much about them, so it is difficult to ascertain information about them for their retention elections. They don’t bother putting up campaign websites. As a result, barely over a handful of judges have been voted out of office since Arizona adopted the retention system in the 1970s.
However, progressive activists have become more organized recently; three Maricopa County Superior Court judges appointed by Republican governors were voted out in 2022.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times