The drawing card for Tuesday's 09 Primary - to the extent that there is one - is the judicial races. Seats at every level of the Pennsylvania court system are on the ballot as well as borough and township officers and school board posts.  Some countywide positions are also up, but in Montgomery County only the Jury Commissioners get decided on.  (Stifle those yawns.) 

Come out and vote, and remind friends and family.  In this off-off-year election, it just might send a message (see below).  Not showing up definitely does.

Judicial elections are serious business, and the guts of this election is embodied in Friday's  hard copy Inquirer headline, "Judicial Ethics on Trial Tuesday."  Oddly, the headline nailed the issue better than the story itself.  It leads with the "public perception of the judiciary" being the central issue in the campaign to fill the one Supreme Court seat on the ballot.  Says The Inquirer: "With a high profile judicial-corruption case in Luzerne County fresh on voters' minds and questions about the length of time it took the Supreme Court to respond to issues raised by the case, candidates for the highest court are pledging to restore integrity to the bench."

I would argue that the entire Pennsylvania judiciary is on trial, in a sense, as a result of the Luzerne County judicial scandal, and you might want to throw in county government, too. "Scandal" even seems too refined a term.  One Supreme Court candidate used the adjective, "horrific," which seems about right.  As you probably know by now, it was a get-rich-quick scheme involving the railroading and warehousing of some 1,200 children in return for kickbacks by two Luzerne juvenile court judges.  And just to facilitate the process, the judges, who have already pleaded guilty, thought nothing of abandoning certain legal niceties in their courtrooms like the right to an attorney.  They figured no defense speeds things up a bit, especially when the end-result is pre-ordained, anyway - a point hard not to concede.  We're talking about a level of despicability here that almost defies description since whatever language you use - "a tawdry and colossal travesty of justice" comes to mind - ends up sounding cheap or over the top. 

But the judicial train wreck in Luzerne is about more than two pathetic local judges and even more than the desultory approach to justice displayed by the highest court in the Commonwealth, which took action only after their judicial colleagues were formally indicted, despite being well-versed on the problem by filings nine months earlier from the Juvenile Law Center, the State Attorney General's Office and the State Department of Public Welfare.  It is about the crumbling of the public trust in a state judicial system that continues to be perceived as far too close to the  cronyism that is the lifeblood of political power in the Keystone State. Examples of court collusion with political deal makers on central political questions such as the 2005 pay raise scandal and casino gambling have solidified the view that  the judiciary is anything but above the political fray.  

Certainly county budget and administrative oversight in Luzerne went AWOL while an elaborate privatization scheme to the tune of tens of millions of dollars for a cozy leasing arrangement with a private developer was carried out under the nose of county government.  Not only was there a stifling reticence to come forward by those in the Luzerne Courthouse, presumably for fear of retribution, but oversight of one of those vaunted "public-private partnerships" between the county and a private developer/facilities operator was non-existent.  According to The New York Times, the now convicted President Judge had sole control of the courthouse budget and once he eliminated funds for the old county facility, the county commissioners had no recourse but to sign onto the leasing deal. Where were the bean counters?  Where were the institutional safeguards - an Inspector General maybe - with the clout to call the question of contract give-aways? 

Well, counties in Pennsylvania generally don't have Inspector Generals.  What do you take them for, nests of corruption like, say, Philadelphia?  (Philadelphia does, at least, have an IG's Office.)

No, this is not a blind indictment of the Commonwealth's 67 counties on the basis of the incredible judicial sleaze and lack of contract oversight in one of them.  It is just a sad cautionary note that "pay-to-play" or just playing fast and loose with contracts and the public purse can have dangerous - even tragic - consequences.  It did for 1,200 families in Luzerne.

So there's an election on Tuesday.  It matters, all of it.  The process may be flawed, but don't forget Woody Allen's sage advice: life is all about showing up. Go vote.

Up next: some of the ins and outs of judicial elections in Pennsylvania.  And should judges even be elected in the first place?