Hey, Pierce County, do you feel ill-equipped for election duty? You’re not alone
We forgot the judges.
Or rather, to put the mistake squarely where it belongs: I forgot the judges.
If it pleases the court, I plead guilty to once count of misdemeanor negligence and am determined not to reoffend.
Over the last three weeks, the TNT Editorial Board published full-length endorsements for state and local elections in which at least one candidate will be eliminated in Tuesday’s primary.
This fall we will circle back and offer recommendations in the general election, the one-on-one phase of competition. By necessity, we also decided to let the crowded field for Congress and U.S. Senate thin out in the primary before we size up the finalists ahead of the Nov. 6 runoff.
Part of my job is sending invitations and scheduling interviews for political candidates to meet with us.
But when combing through the list of all who filed for office in 2018, I somehow overlooked a three-person race for a seat on the Pierce County District Court bench. By the time I realized the error, it was too late to schedule the three for interviews and do a proper endorsement.
Karl Williams, John Sheeran and Matthew F. Wareham are vying for an open seat on the court, which handles everything from small claims to traffic infractions to protection orders.
District Court judges do the heavy lifting of trial court work – their black robes should come with blue collars – and we regret missing an opportunity to shed light on your choices.
It’s rare that you even have a choice to make, given that most Washington courtrooms are presided over by entrenched incumbents.
All eight seats on the District Court bench are up for election this year, but six are unopposed. The other two probably would be, as well, if Judges Frank Dacca and Maggie Ross (with a combined 35 years on the bench) hadn’t decided to hang up their gavels.
So it’s nice that voters have a range of experience from which to choose for Position 6. Williams is a longtime judge pro tem (meaning he’s filled in as a judge for District Court and local cities) ; Sheeran is a veteran deputy Pierce County prosecutor; and Wareham is a Tacoma-based trial attorney.
In this race and more than two dozen other election contests around the 253 area code, voters are entrusted to make informed decisions. Relying on just one source, whether a candidate’s website, a newspaper endorsement or your wise old Uncle Chester, isn’t a great idea.
If you feel ill-equipped for this duty, you’re not alone. Members of our Editorial Board at times feel like we lack information to thoroughly evaluate elected officials who’ve earned advanced degrees and built deep subject matter expertise.
This is most true when we go through the endorsement process for judges – especially Washington Supreme Court justices who, unlike their peers in more than half the states and the other Washington, must join the political circus and stump for votes every six years.
But make no mistake: No candidates get kid-glove treatment from us. We do our research. We interview them – usually in the same room with their opponents – ask tough questions and compare their positions. And between election cycles, we watch them closely as they issue rulings, pass laws and spend your money.
In the end, however, all that homework is reduced to a leap of faith before we make our endorsements, the same as when you mark the bubbles on your ballot. We do the best we can with what we have.
Spend any time at all living in a democracy, and you know there’s not much pretty about it. Winston Churchill called it “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
It’ll never be perfect, but I count 492,036 ways to make it better. That’s the number of registered voters in Pierce County.
As of Friday, only 74,733 of them, or roughly 15 percent, had cast ballots in the primary. You have until Tuesday at 8 p.m. to turn in yours.
If you forget a stamp, don’t worry. The state is picking up the postage this year.
If you forget to study every race and leave some bubbles empty, that’s OK, too. You’ll have another shot in November.
You might even forget the judges, like I did.
Just don’t forget what it means to be one of those 492,036 rays of hope.
Remember to vote.
Matt Misterek is editorial page editor of The News Tribune. Reach him by email at matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published August 5, 2018 at 3:49 PM.