What are all these judges doing on my ballot? In addition to the Democratic Party primary vote on May 21, there is also a “Nonpartisan General Election” section at the bottom of the ballot. Most of these races have unopposed incumbents. There’s a contest for 1 of 4 positions in the Supreme Court of GA and 1 of 7 positions in the Court of Appeals of Georgia. My ballot has additional votes for the local Superior Court and for the State Court of my county.
Be aware that this is the general election for these positions. The candidates do not have official party affiliations, though there are ways to glean information about their partisan preferences (see links at the end of the article). This vote did seem overwhelming to me, with 20-some judicial positions on the ballot, even if only a few have challengers. I’m glad I found a few resources to describe what all this is about and who the candidates are.
The Atlanta Civic Circle has a ‘judicial election primer’ from 2022 that describes the court system and general strategies for voting for judges:
Georgia’s judicial branch interprets our state laws to, ideally, administer justice. All judicial elections in Georgia are nonpartisan. Our state judicial system has two appellate-level courts, where you can appeal a lower court’s decision. They are the Supreme Court of Georgia and Court of Appeals of Georgia.
Georgia has five types of trial-level courts: superior, state, magistrate, probate, and juvenile.
–Judges for superior and state courts serve a four-year term, and they must have at least seven years of practicing law under their belts.
–Probate court judges also serve a four-year term, but in smaller counties, they don’t have to be lawyers. For counties with populations over 96,000, they must have practiced law for at least seven years.
–Magistrate court judges do not have to be lawyers and their terms vary. They do have to be at least 25 years old with a high-school diploma.
–You won’t see juvenile court judge candidates on your ballot, because they aren’t elected, except in Floyd County. Otherwise, juvenile judges are appointed by the superior court judges in their county for a four-year term. They must have at least five years of experience as lawyers.
For the current elections, I found information from “Atlanta Politics Nerd”, which made a write-up for the two contested state-wide elections: