As part of our elections coverage, QCity Metro invited readers to submit questions to our reporting team, which we seek to answer in a way that provides factual information free of politics. Read more at the end of this article.
Question: I care a lot about judges, and I think we don’t know enough about them. They have become activists and drive the issues that impact our lives, such as abortion and voting rights. It is so hard to know what their records are and how that might point to how they will vote in the future.
Answer: You are correct in that the judges chosen in the upcoming election will decide cases that could have far-reaching impact. Judicial elections, however, are tricky, says Christopher Cooper, a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University. That’s because judges can’t say much about how they would decide a case, and evidence on how they decided previous cases is often hard to understand and can be even harder to find.
Cooper recommends voters review this judicial voter guide from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
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For much of 2022, our reporters and editors have taken part in a nationwide fellowship called Democracy SOS, which encourages newsrooms to reimagine how they cover elections, with a goal to build civic engagement, equity and healthy discourse.
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What are the issues that matter most as your prepare to vote in this key election? And what related questions can our QCity Metro reporters help answer?
Let us know in the section below?
