Judicial Retention Elections In Colorado In 2022

Judicial retention elections apply to state court judges in Colorado and are up down, retain or do not retain elections with a majority need to remove a judge from office. If a judge is not retained, the vacancy is filled by a merit based system with the Governor having a say over which of the three finalists to appoint.

There are eight Colorado Court of Appeals judges facing judicial retention elections in 2022.

In Denver, there are twelve district court judges (the trial court of general jurisdiction) and nine county court judges (the trial court of limited jurisdiction) facing judicial retention elections in 2022.

If you must leave anything on your ballot blank, this is the place to limit the use of your voter research resources because the odds that all 29 judges on the Denver ballot will be retained is in the vicinity of 99.5% this year no matter what you make think about them personally.

I may or may not update this post to discuss the merits of retaining these judges.

The Colorado Gazette reports:

A total of 164 judges were eligible for retention in 2022, but only 140 received evaluations and 135 chose to remain on the ballot. Judges may opt to resign or retire prior to their retention for multiple reasons, including the expectation of a negative performance evaluation.

The system was adopted in a 1966 amendment to the Colorado State Constitution and remains a great improvement over the system in place before then.