Who's on the appellate court ballot in California

What is on this ballot

California does not hold contested elections for appellate judges. The governor appoints them, the Commission on Judicial Appointments confirms them, and after that they face voters only in yes-or-no retention questions printed without a party label — which is why no party is listed below. The ballot asks “Shall Associate Justice X be elected to the office for the term provided by law?” A majority of yes votes means a new term; a majority of no votes creates a vacancy the governor fills. California holds these votes at gubernatorial general elections, so they come round every four years, and 2026 is one of those years. The Secretary of State’s certified list for November 3, 2026 contains 63 appellate retention questions. Two are statewide and every California voter votes on them: Supreme Court Associate Justice Kelli M. Evans, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022, and Associate Justice Joshua Groban, appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2018. Those two are profiled below. The other 61 are Court of Appeal justices, voted on only by the counties in their appellate district, and they are listed here rather than profiled individually — profiling sixty-one uncontested retention questions would make the page unreadable, and there is almost no published assessment of any of them. By district, as the certified list prints them: First Appellate District (Bay Area) — Charles A. Smiley, Kathleen M. Banke, Monique Langhorne Wilson, Therese M. Stewart, Tara M. Desautels, Ioana Petrou, Victor A. Rodriguez, Tracie L. Brown, Mark Simons, Danny Y. Chou and Gordon Burns. Second Appellate District (Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo) — Michelle C. Kim, Gregory J. Weingart, Steve Goorvitch, Anne Richardson, Rashida A. Adams, Mark Hanasono, Helen Zukin, Audra M. Mori, Nicholas Daum, Armen Tamzarian, Brian M. Hoffstadt, Tari L. Cody, Kenneth R. Yegan, Gonzalo C. Martinez, Natalie Stone, John Wiley, Matthew A. Scherb and Victor G. Viramontes. Third Appellate District (Sacramento and northeastern California) — Shama Mesiwala, Lauri Damrell, Stacy Boulware Eurie, Aimee A. Feinberg and Jonathan Renner. Fourth Appellate District (San Diego, Inland Empire, Orange County) — Eran M. Bermudez, Jose S. Castillo, Truc T. Do, David M. Rubin, William S. Dato, Julia C. Kelety, Corey G. Lee, Michael J. Raphael, Joanne Motoike, Nathan R. Scott, Juliet O. Macaulay, Martha K. Gooding, Thomas A. Delaney and Deborah C. Servino. Fifth Appellate District (central San Joaquin Valley) — Arlan L. Harrell, Sonny S. Sandhu, Amy K. Guerra, Kathleen A. Meehan, Mark W. Snauffer and Thomas DeSantos. Sixth Appellate District (Santa Clara and the central coast) — Daniel H. Bromberg, Charles E. Wilson II, Charles F. Adams and Allison Marston Danner. Three of the 63 questions could not be read cleanly from the certified list because the text broke across pages, so that roster is 58 of the 61 Court of Appeal names. California has no official judicial performance evaluation commission and no statewide bar rating of retention candidates, and justices are barred from campaigning for themselves, so there is very little published material on any of these questions. Voters have removed California justices at a retention election exactly once, in 1986.