San Francisco voters were handed a rare chance this Election Day to weigh in on two California Supreme Court justices, Joshua Groban and Kelli Evans, after their names appeared on the ballot alongside 13 appellate court justices. The question next to each name was plain enough: whether the justice should be elected to the office for the term provided by law.
That mattered because California voters almost never actually get to choose or reject judges at the polls, even though the California Constitution says Supreme Court justices, justices of the courts of appeal and superior court judges shall be elected. In practice, the process is far narrower than the constitutional language suggests. San Francisco voters saw two Supreme Court names, but across California more than 1,750 Superior Court judges usually stay off the ballot unless someone challenges them.
Joshua Groban and Evans were not the only judges in the frame. The ballot also included 13 appellate court justices, a reminder that judicial elections in California are usually more of a review than a contest. Superior Court judges across the state serve six-year terms, and unless an attorney challenges a sitting judge for another term, the judge is deemed elected and never goes before voters. In San Francisco, that arrangement has already produced one of the rare exceptions this year: a Superior Court election happened earlier because one judge retired too late for Governor Newsom to appoint a replacement.
The gap between the constitutional promise and the real-world process is the point. The rules say judges shall be elected, but the machinery of appointment has made the ballot a rarity. By the time Governor Newsom leaves office in January, he will have appointed over 800 judges or justices to California courts, while the California Judicial Council last week recommended creating 159 additional judgeships to deal with workloads and backlogs. That means the state is adding benches and filling them faster than most voters ever see them.
There is also not much for voters to review. Judicial information in the voter pamphlets is limited to one page about judicial nominations, and half of that page is biographical information on Joshua Groban and Kelli Evans. So the ballot gave San Francisco voters a formal say, but not much more than a name, a title and a legal question. If the next governor appoints judges at the same pace as Governor Newsom, the Nov. 3 vote may end up as voters' last and only voice in the selection and retention of judges.
