Hutzell: Judges may be the most important vote on the ballot. Ron Jarashow would like a word.

Midway down the Anne Arundel County ballot, voters can pick two of three candidates for Circuit Court judge.

The winners will preside over jury trials for the next 15 years, deciding what justice means in everything from murder cases to child custody disputes.

Most voters likely know nothing about the candidates: sitting judges Ginina Jackson-Stevenson and Sidney Butcher and challenger Elizabeth Adams.

How do you choose? Attorney Ron Jarashow has some advice.

“The judge election is maybe the most important vote on the ballot,” he said. “They have a kind of unlimited power to affect your life.”

Anne Arundel is Maryland’s only jurisdiction with a contested judicial election this year. Voters will choose two of the 13 people who judge their fights, mistakes and tragedies when those matters reach a courtroom in Annapolis.

Jarashow is one of the few people to enter the process of selecting judges — only to get spit out the other end. He’s been a judge, a failed candidate, an election spoiler and an advocate for change.

“Well, it’s not a crusade,” he said.

Former Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley appointed Jarashow, then 60, to the Circuit Court bench in March 2010. It was his professional dream job, planted while he clerked for an appellate court judge.

“It exposed me to the broad breadth of what being a judge was,” he said. “I always wanted to serve the public, always wanted to be a judge and serve in that way to resolve people’s problems.”

Governors usually base their judicial appointments on recommendations from one of 13 nominating commissions, which vet applicants for each opening. The governor’s picks take the bench — at least until the next election.

Jarashow wore the black robes for eight months. After each day’s courtroom proceedings and preparations for the next day, he campaigned.

Maryland gives voters an electoral veto over appointed trial judges. Any lawyer who is 30, a citizen and a county resident can run. In the past 50 years, challengers have won 17 times.

That’s how Jarashow stopped being a judge. He lost.

It was a rematch year. Republican Bob Ehrlich tried to win his job back from O’Malley, and linked Alison Asti’s campaign for judge to his campaign for governor.

Ehrlich lost. Asti won. So did O’Malley appointee Laura Kiessling.

“As with anybody who loses an election,” he said, “you find a way to go on.”

For him, moving on meant returning to private practice. It also meant working to end contested judicial elections. He testified five times before the General Assembly in favor of bills to eliminate them.

Ending contested elections would require a constitutional amendment.

Three years ago, he was named to a commission studying the system. It recommended replacing contested elections with retention votes, agreeing that voters struggle to make an informed choice but are unwilling to give up on democratic choice.

“You’re largely voting in the dark about what the candidates are and their backgrounds,” Jarashow said.

Voters also elect Orphans’ Court judges, who decide disputes over wills and estates. And they vote on retaining appeals court judges.

No one independently rates sitting judges or their challengers in an election. You can’t easily check an attorney’s history or a judge’s rulings.

Challengers usually post their resumes online, but rarely campaign on being tougher or wiser. Sitting judges do the same, but add that the system designed to pick the best-qualified judges picked them.

Adams started as an assistant prosecutor, then represented state and local governments. She applied for an appointment, but wasn’t chosen. Her campaign points out that she’s the only candidate born in Anne Arundel.

Butcher is a former prosecutor too. Gov. Larry Hogan appointed him to the District Court in 2018, and Gov. Wes Moore elevated him in December.

Moore also appointed Jackson-Stevenson. She began her career as a public defender, opened a private practice and later served as a family court magistrate.

Party politics always plays a role. Republicans are endorsing Adams. Democrats are campaigning for Butcher and Jackson-Stevenson.

The sitting judges accused Adams of ties to the Republican MAGA movement, which controls the party in Maryland and beyond. She denies it. Her campaign is largely self-funded.

The winner may be decided by things unrelated to the pursuit of justice, such as whose name comes first in the box for judge or campaign skills or the names on the ballot for governor.

Race may also play a role in who wins.

Moore first appointed Jackson-Stevenson in 2023, but challenger Tom Casey beat her in 2024.

It’s hard to ignore that she was the first Black judge appointed in Maryland to be beaten by a white challenger, or that voters elected a white Hogan appointee on a slate with Jackson-Stevenson: Christine Celeste.

Moore stuck by Jackson-Stevenson, taking the unusual step of reappointing her weeks after her loss. If she comes in third again, history will repeat itself.

Jarashow never sought another appointment. But he got involved with a second judicial election.

In 2016, D.C. Administrative Judge Claudia Barber ran against four appointed Circuit Court judges. It was a long shot, and race was a factor. Barber was Black and all sitting judges, even those not on the ballot, were white.

Jarashow wrote to her supervisors, claiming that Barber violated ethics rules by running in a partisan election. She lost the election, then her job.

The letter matched his convictions, yet he almost seemed obsessed with the system that ultimately rejected him.

“All I did was write a letter that an administrative law judge, somebody who’s seeking election to be a judge in Maryland, ought to follow their ethical rules,” Jarashow said.

He sees merit in voters correcting a governor’s omission. There are just no guarantees that voting in the dark does that.

At 77, Jarashow knows he won’t see the change he’s worked toward.

Asking voters to give up voting for a position that holds immense power over their lives is a hard ask.

All Jarashow can hope for is that voters seek answers.

“Somebody who just runs for election that’s never been evaluated and never been nominated is someone with a question mark,” he said. “That’s all.”