Colorado’s judiciary is in many ways a mystery to the public it serves.

That became clear once again this week in The Gazette’s latest exposé of the judicial system’s foibles. The deep dive by our investigative news team reminded us how little voters have to go on when deciding each Election Day whether to keep judges on the bench. In particular, as The Gazette’s report revealed, the public is given no insight into how often court cases are overturned on appeal due to a mistake by one of the state’s many trial judges.

Colorado’s 22 judicial district performance commissions, which are supposed to evaluate judges for the public’s benefit, fall short in various ways. It would help if the commissions at least tracked and disclosed how often a judge’s cases are reversed, and why. That could give voters a glimpse at a judge’s basic competence, or lack thereof. Indeed, after an extensive review of court records, The Gazette’s investigative team found dozens of judges, many still in office, have been reversed so frequently for errors it stuns legal experts.

All of which raises broader questions about the way the state’s judges are reviewed and rated for the public’s benefit. It also raises questions about how judges are chosen in the first place.

Colorado’s judges aren’t elected; they’re appointed by the governor – from lists of nominees compiled well outside the limelight by judicial nominating commissions. Judges do have to face periodic judicial-retention elections, and they can be voted out. But that rarely happens.

The roundabout way in which judges are chosen, along with the fact there is so little useful information about their performance disseminated publicly once they’re on the job, almost ensure voters will remain in the dark. It means not only judges’ competence but also their judicial philosophy and political tilt are largely unknown.

All of which helps explain why so few judges are ousted in retention elections. Most voters never even have heard of them much less know anything about them.

Gazette columnist and former 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler recently summed up the information void like this:

“The periodic performance reviews … can be found at JudicialPerformance.Colorado.gov. The good folks who generate them put a great deal of effort and good faith into producing them. Respectfully, their existence is largely unknown to the public and their content is less than illuminating. … Beyond ‘meets standards,’ the two paragraphs touching upon performance reveal little.”

To say the least, the review process for judges needs to be retooled and significantly enhanced to provide voters meaningful information. Alongside that, it’s worth asking whether Colorado should explore other methods for picking its judges to begin with.

There are in fact many different approaches to selecting judges among U.S. states, and like the states themselves, those approaches are all over the map. Many states elect their judges while others appoint them, and there are plenty of variations of each.

The long-standing defense of Colorado’s system of appointing judges is that it somehow prevents the judiciary from being “politicized.” Whatever the merit of that abstract argument, the current system also seems to deprive voters of helpful information they might pick up if prospective judges first had to court them on the campaign trail. Imagine the impact of judicial candidates’ websites, public debates, Q&As with the media and so forth.

And for those concerned about turning judgeships into partisan affairs, it’s worth noting that a number of states that elect their judges – like Washington, Oregon, Minnesota and Wisconsin – do so through nonpartisan races. (Closer to home, neighboring New Mexico elects judges in partisan elections and Utah, whose governor appoints judges, runs those appointments by the state’s senate for its consent.)

The retention elections our state’s voters currently must wade through are nearly meaningless exercises. We know next to nothing about those who mete out justice to the rest of us. Colorado can do better.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board