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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. If you listen to this show, you are probably aware that New York City's primary election it's coming up on June 22nd with early voting starting next weekend, and there is a lot to keep in mind when heading to the polls this year, especially for Democrats who far outnumber Republicans in most parts of the city, which is also why the primary might matter more than the general election in determining who holds office next year.

Not only are there 13 Democrats on the ballot for mayor, yes 13, not just the eight who've raised enough money to be in the debates, and the 10 candidates were controller, to mention some of the city-wide races. Then there are the borough presidents and DAs and the city council members, and you can vote for up to five candidates in all but the DA races, so it's not enough just to know your favorite.

Then, have you looked at your ballot? There are also judges on there and candidates for something called judicial convention delegate, which might come with the direct vote for any 18 of these 23 candidates. Yikes. Why judges on a ballot and why judges and judicial convention delegates on the same ballot? To try and sort out those final categories on your ballots, and it is confusing, we're joined by Rebecca Lewis, deputy state politics reporter for City & State who has written about this crazy process for filling the bench. Rebecca, thanks for coming to WNYC. Hi.

Rebecca Lewis: Thanks for having me on. It's a topic I love to talk about.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you reported on this and love to talk about it because we all come to the judge's section of our ballots every election cycle and say, I don't know, whatever, but of course it matters who judges are, but the very fact that New York elects its judges is at least not universal. It's not the way it's done everywhere, right?

Rebecca Lewis: Yes, and New York, I'm sure if you go to other states, so I'll say something is wacky going on with our judges, but New York's judiciary is pretty wacky. We have a combination of elected positions, appointed positions. They change county by county. New York City has positions that don't exist outside of New York City. You have Supreme Court justices who you don't vote on in primaries. There are judicial conventions, it's a whole mishmash of things. It can be very easy to get lost in the complicated web of the judiciary.

Brian Lehrer: Voters might see candidates on their ballots for civil court judge or surrogate court judge, depending on where they live. What kinds of cases do civil court judges handle and then what about surrogate court judges?

Rebecca Lewis: In New York City, civil court judges, they handle, smaller civil cases up to $25,000, and there is a small claims section of up to $10,000, but what's interesting about civil court judges is that a lot of times they get reassigned somewhere else. We have a very stressed judicial system and a limited number of seats, and not enough seats for the number of cases. What happens a lot of times is that you get elected to civil court and you wind up doing a stint in criminal court or in family court, or you get appointed as an acting Supreme Court justice.

When you're electing for civil court, there is a pretty solid possibility that they might wind up serving in a different part of the judiciary and potentially even a different part of the city, might wind up in a totally different county, but the strictly, civil court, smaller civil court cases up to $25000. Housing court is part of the civil court, but they are selected and appointed separately. When you're voting for a civil court judge, you're not voting for housing court who handle tenant problems and evictions.

Surrogates court, one per county, unless you're in Manhattan or Brooklyn, in which case you have two. There is one big race right now, going on in Brooklyn. They serve a term of 14 years, so it doesn't happen too often that you have an open seat. They handle estates and wills, probate cases, Not everyone is going to have to interact with the surrogate's court, but it's also sort of a big deal. It's traditionally where there have been a source of patronage for old school Tammany Hall machine politics.

There's a lot of money to be had there. A lot of money for lawyers. Surrogate court judges are able to actually appoint the heads of city agents of a city agency, the public administrator for the borough, and their council, and those are both high-paying jobs. Then, lawyers can get big payouts when they are helping to settle estate cases. There's a lot of money wrapped up in the surrogate's court, so there's always been a lot of attention on that one.

Brian Lehrer: I guess most daunting for voters is the fact that there are special rules for what you can do when campaigning to be a judge. You're not supposed to take positions. As we see in these Supreme Court hearings at the federal level in Congress, you're not supposed to take positions on the kinds of cases that are going to come before you, and yet it's your positions on those kinds of issues that a voter would probably want to know whether this judge or that judge is closer to what they think. How can voters find out about the candidates?

Rebecca Lewis: It is a tough and unusual situation. Candidates will be the first to tell you that it's tough to campaign for a judicial race. A lot relies on them being able to talk about the kinds of cases that they've argued in the past as lawyers, who has endorsed them. Most candidates do have websites that you can go to and you can look up and see, okay, this is their background. This is the kind of law that they practice. These are the kinds of cases that they've taken. They can't necessarily take positions on political issues, but they can talk about their own judicial temperament. They obviously can't talk about anything that could be seen as a bias for any cases that they might hear in the future.

It's very much tough. You can definitely learn about them, but it's definitely hard for the voter if you're looking for hard and fast ideological similarities between yourself and a candidate. A lot of times it comes down to seeing who's endorsed them. If they have support from people that you support, there's a pretty good chance that this person probably aligns with your beliefs and that's one of the reasons also that who you are connected to really helps when you're running for judge.

It's very hard to come in totally out of the political-- You can't be political when you're campaigning, but it's very hard to come in without any political ties, any past political organizing or involved with local clubs, or bar associations who can help you meet the right people, let's say, to make sure that your name is being considered when the parties are discussing who they might endorse.

When your name winds up on a slate of candidates, that makes it a little bit easier because people will see your name with whoever's on the top of the ballot. It's definitely hard. It's definitely, not the easiest of races to be the most informed about unless you're like a law junkie and really get into the nitty-gritty of the kind of cases that, these lawyers have argued, but it's not impossible. There's definitely information out there about all of the judges who are running.

Brian Lehrer: Now, about those judicial convention delegates, it would seem like that convention would have met and picked these candidates on your ballot, but no, they will pick the general election candidates for other judgeships. That's what the convention delegates who we get to vote for will do. They will pick the candidates for judgeships for other elections, which is confusing to me even as I'm saying it, but is it accurate?

Rebecca Lewis: Yes. It's almost like if you want to think about it, and this might not make it any simpler because it's equally as confusing. The way that when you vote for president, you're not really voting for president, you're voting for a slate of delegates who will go and cast a vote at a convention. I guess you can think about it the same way. It's like that only you don't know who the delegates going to support before you vote for them.

This is for the Supreme Court. There are no primaries for the Supreme Court in New York State, which is a trial-level court. It's not the same as the Supreme Court of the United States that hears, the top court that hears appeals. New York State's top court is the Court of Appeals. Supreme Court in New York is trial level. They'll hear high-level criminal cases in New York City and, high-level civil cases.

They are selected, the nominees, the candidates are selected by the judicial delegates at a nominating convention a little bit later this year, Whoever you vote to go will cast their votes of who they think should be the candidates. Although a lot of times, the delegates are people who are club members, Democratic club members, people who are representing certain communities, people who have ties to various local political groups. A lot of times, who will be the candidates are decided before the convention. You go in, there's already been discussions about who will likely be the candidates and for the most part, the convention and the delegates are there to say, yes, these are who we're going to approve.

From my reporting and from what I've heard from delegates is that it's not necessarily like you go in and have very intense debates per se. It's not like traditional elections that you have where candidates will come in and really campaign. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on before the convention even happens and then the convention will officially make the people who have been campaigning behind the scenes the candidates for Supreme Court who will appear on your ballot in November on potentially more than one party line.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote about a lawsuit challenging this entire upto system that reached the US Supreme Court in 2008. You quoted a line of Thurgood Marshall's that one of the justices who upheld this system cited, "The constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws," not a ringing endorsement of this system. To boot, these delegates are chosen by assembly district and the number is determined by that district's turnout in the last governor's race, so yikes. Say your ballot says pick 18 of these 23 names, which actually happens, how would you know which to choose? In other words, when a choice in an election, when is it really more like a cone, like if a tree falls in a forest and not actually a choice.

Rebecca Lewis: It's pretty tough when you get hit with that choose 18 out of 23. There is a pretty good chance that your average voter has not done extensive research on every single judicial delegate candidate on their ballot. Why it's not very often that you see hyper-competitive elections either. Not that there haven't been, there have been some candidates who have run for delegate for that very purpose, to let people know, hey, this is happening and should care.

Brian Lehrer: In our last 30 seconds, bottom line, if people actually want to dig in and get into the weeds on who these judicial candidates and judicial convention delegate candidates are, is the best thing to look at your ballot in advance which you can see and then just Google all these names and see what endorsements and stuff come up?

Rebecca Lewis: Yes, that's pretty much, these kinds of candidates generally are not necessarily running intense campaigns. You might have a couple who are really running serious campaigns and trying to get their names out there, but a lot of times, it might be very hard to find any information about these people. This is an especially tough one to really get information on.

Brian Lehrer: There, listeners, is at least some information about how to vote for judge and judicial delegates, crazy and obscure as it is. We thank Rebecca Lewis, deputy state politics reporter for City & State New York. Thanks so much for digging into this.

Rebecca Lewis: Thanks for having me on.

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