Back home: Politics

 We spent Election Day on the Cumberland Plateau, so there was some catching up to do when we got home. 

Two justices on the State Supreme Court were re-elected: Sarah Warren by 18 points and Charlie Bethel by 2.

Both are Republicans and both are bad judges — not because they are Republicans but because they looked for ways to empower people who wanted to overturn an election that the current occupant of the White House lost.

Judicial elections in Georgia are allegedly nonpartisan. They are on the same ballot as the primary elections.

To me, the failure to unseat such candidates was the big story. But I’m used to being in the minority.

In 2022, during the last midterms, more people voted Republican than Democratic. This year, 52.6 percent of the 2.07 million voters cast ballots in the Democratic Primary, 45.3 percent in the Republican and a little more than 2 percent requested nonpartisan ballots, meaning they voted only in the judicial elections.

Turnout was 28.2 percent.

People who tamper with elections or encourage others to do so shouldn’t be judges. And if we can’t inspire 30 percent of the registered voters to have a say about that, we’re in trouble.

I spent some time looking at newspapers and news sites operated by volunteers. I’m convinced that a lot of registered voters didn’t know that people in Georgia vote on judges or that judges who had such a shameful history were on the ballot.

People who want better government in Georgia have a lot of work to do.