Unless I’ve missed something, there is not a single contested judicial race on either Hennepin County or Ramsey County ballots.

Is this bad? No. It’s fine. Being a judge is mostly a job where you sign off on agreements of various kinds, or listen to a bunch of people who are having probably the worst day of their lives. There are judges who are better than others, but most of the time, incumbent judges only get challenged because (a) somebody who probably should not have the job wants it (like Michelle MacDonald), or (b) they really screwed up in a way you’ll probably find if you search their name (like the judge in Ramsey County who drove drunk in 2018.) Michelle MacDonald is currently disbarred and while there are judges who did stuff that pissed people off, none of them made their peers mad enough that someone’s running against them.

Okay so what do I do with these races? You can check off the incumbents’ names if you want, or some subset of incumbents’ names (someone told me yesterday she was going to vote to re-elect all the judges who weren’t originally nominated by Pawlenty, that’s fine but you’ll have to go create your own list), or you can leave them blank. It does not matter, because it’s rare an incumbent judge loses even if they have an opponent on the ballot, and it’s really unlikely to happen if the opponent is a write-in. Someone would have to be fundraising for a gazillion mailers and billboards and so on. You would probably have heard.

What do you do with these races? If I’m not in a huge hurry, I usually fill in the dots by all the incumbents’ names because I am the sort of person who wants to fill in all the dots.

Can I write someone in? Of course, but FYI, in addition to the fact that they won’t win, they cannot serve if they are over 70 or under 21 and they must be a licensed attorney to serve as a judge. (Although they won’t win, so feel free to write in whoever strikes your fancy. This really does not matter.)

I’m in some other county and I have a contested race. How am I supposed to know who to vote for? My recommendation is that you look at both websites and google the name of the incumbent judge to see what comes up (a drunk driving arrest? a really shoddy job at a high-profile trial? or nothing at all?) If the challenger just links to a law firm site (that’s weirdly common) that suggests to me that they view the filing fee as cheap advertising and are not seriously running. If you find nothing in particular about the incumbent judge, I would vote for the incumbent judge. I will note that lawyers nearly always just vote for the incumbent judge.

ETA: My dad, a Political Scientist who’s written a book on judicial selection, looked up the one contested judicial race in Minnesota:

The one contested trial court race is in the First Judicial District which includes some suburban counties; the counties in the district are Carver, Dakota, Goodhue, Le Sueur, McLeod, Scott and Sibley.  See https://www.inforum.com/news/minnesota/over-100-minnesota-judges-are-up-for-election-only-one-race-is-contested,

The incumbent was appointed in 2021 after about three decades of practicing law. There are no issues that have been identified with the incumbent who is being challenged, except that he did not go to law school in Minnesota (https://www.republicaneagle.com/opinion/letters/letter-rare-opportunity/article_eceab28e-56ec-11ed-94b5-3f1831184083.html). The challenger graduated from William Mitchell (another place says Hamline) and passed the bar in 2018. Other than as a student, he has had little, if any, courtroom experience (his website says that he worked with a small firm doing commercial litigation). He’s had three jobs since graduating from law school and it’s not clear what he’s currently doing (https://hansonforjudgemn.com/issues/).

I would absolutely vote for the First Judicial District incumbent. Judge is not a “four years out of law school” kind of job, that letter also says he’ll be an “originalist” (what would that even mean at the district court level? good grief) and “he didn’t go to law school here” is Minnesota at its most absurd.

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In addition to writing political commentary, I write science fiction and fantasy. My book that came out in April 2021, Chaos on CatNet, takes place in a future Minneapolis. It’s a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet and signed copies of both books are usually available from Dreamhaven and the NOW REOPENED Uncle Hugo’s (it’s at 2716 E 31st St in Minneapolis, in the former Glass Endeavors.)