In Sarah Singleton and David Thomson, Gov. Bill Richardson recently made a couple of excellent appointments to state district court seats for Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Río Arriba counties. But how long will they serve on the 1st District bench?

Those two and the highly qualified Sheri Raphaelson, appointed last year to replace Tim García who moved to the appellate court, are subject to a goofy state law making appointees run in partisan elections to keep their seats. They had to pass a merit-selection board before the governor appointed them — but now they're sitting ducks for political opportunists who might or might not have qualified for merit selection.

Filing deadline is today — but the zopilotes have been circling since the appointments of these three were announced. Who among the challengers will wind up on the June 1 ballot, and who just wanted to get their names into the mitote mix? Check out tomorrow's New Mexican.

The political animals in the New Mexico menagerie will argue that campaigning should be part of the judicial process; that judicial appointees should have to get out and among the gente over whose lives or fortunes they might have a say. And besides, said legislators who with great reluctance passed a merit-selection law a couple of decades ago, we have to run; why shouldn't they at least undergo one popular election?

Well, how 'bout because unlike legislators, whose bowing to the whims of the powerful or the persuasive is part of politics, judges must be scrupulously just?

The judiciary, already held to canons of ethics as lawyers, hew to a higher standard — yet can come under a shadow when judges must raise campaign contributions and round up party support to fend off electoral opposition. And pity the poor merit appointee who dares to hold himself or herself above politics while challengers cut backroom deals. Who's got the better chance in the primary — where, in Democrat-heavy New Mexico, the contest is usually decided?

Once past the partisan-election hurdle, judges face only up-or-down, retention-or-rejection elections every six years — although they must win 57 percent of the vote. This part of the system is a good one, allowing the electorate to kick out crooks who might elude judicial-standards proceedings or judges clearly lacking in judgment.

Sometimes, sitting judges are challenged by candidates who also have cleared the merit-selection hurdle yet aren't in a governor's good graces. Those challengers are to a degree victims of an imperfect system — but they're not making it better by playing politics and tainting it further.

The Legislature should initiate reform: merit selection followed by retention-rejection votes, not a party-political circus.

The same bizarre system also applies to the additional District 1 judicial seat created this year by the Legislature.

Gov. Richardson set yesterday as the application deadline. A nominating commission has 30 days to give him names of their recommendations. He'll have another 30 days to choose the judge. That could take until late April — giving the new judge maybe five or six weeks on the job — all the while campaigning to keep it.

The governor should hold off on this appointment until the June primary no longer plays a role in it.

We recommend keeping judges Thomson, Singleton and Raphaelson, who all happen to be Democrats, on the bench — and sending a message to the challengers: Politics and justice, too often, don't mix.