Who judges the judges in New Mexico? Before you go to the polls to vote on them, check out this website

Recently the Rio Grande Foundation sat down with some of the folks behind a new website that tracks and rates New Mexico judges who will appear on YOUR ballots right now. The site is called JudgetheBench.com and it uses a combination of readily available and requested information on judges (not appeals court or NM Supreme Court) to give voters a better understanding of which judges are worth keeping and which should look for another line of work.

Directly from the site:

From 2020 through mid-2026 we followed more than 5,000 cases involving 150 repeat offenders who cycled through New Mexico jails. A disposition is treated as problematic when the charge is not resolved on the merits — including findings of incompetence, failure to prosecute, State notices of dismissal (nolle prosequi)*, and deferred dismissals.

*A formal statement by the prosecutor that the State will no longer prosecute a pending charge or case.

Valid reasons can exist in a single case. The record below is about pattern: how often those non-merits endings appear in a given courtroom, and what the featured defendants were charged with next.

Explore the site for yourself. It is worth spending some time with. It is NOT easy to make informed decisions about the judiciary in New Mexico. One important note: judges with lower percentages are the ones releasing fewer repeat offenders. This site is a work in progress for the future as citizens work to both inform the public on the role of the judiciary in its important role in crime.