Did you vote to retain the judge who promoted extensive drinking among court staff, which led to a sexual relationship with a staff member? You know the judge, right? After all, he had sex at the courthouse with a member of his staff.

The relationship went south. The staff member filed a complaint and was reassigned to different duties. These facts are buried in the most recent annual report of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline.

The judge was privately censured for four violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct, including the improper use of court facilities. So you don’t know if you voted for this judge because Colorado, unlike most states, has confidential judicial discipline proceedings.

Unsuspecting voters think if they haven’t heard anything bad about a judge, the judge must be OK. That assumption is incorrect. Complaints against judges in Colorado, and the discipline history of judges, are hidden from voters. Even more surprising, the information is also hidden from the performance commissions that review judges.

Your election Blue Book is filled with recommendations about judges that are issued by volunteer government “commissions on judicial performance.” But those commissions don’t know whether any of the judges they’re evaluating have been disciplined, how many complaints have been filed against the judges, or the contents of the complaints filed.

So the randy judge who used his position to encourage extensive drinking that led to a sexual conquest is safe. He’s protected by a dysfunctional system that recklessly hides important information from the public to maintain the façade that all is good.

All is not good. Because we don’t know who the judge is, we don’t know if he’s actually on this year’s ballot. But we do know that the system will work to protect him from ever being exposed.

Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are wishing they were judges in Colorado.

According to the annual report, other acts for which judges were disciplined in private include arbitrary rulings, inappropriate remarks to lawyers and litigants, unprofessional terminology, intemperance, and sexual harassment. All of this is important information which voters should have to decide whether judges should be retained.

The American Bar Association recommends public judicial discipline proceedings. Thirty-four states have public judicial discipline proceedings. Even the judge-centric group at the University of Denver (Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System) has come out in favor of public judicial discipline proceedings.

Attorney discipline proceedings in Colorado are public. And there’s a good reason why. A published case regarding lawyer discipline, whether the lawyer is punished or not, provides guidance to other lawyers on what to do in a similar situation. Lawyers are constantly learning. Like attorneys, judges should get the benefit of published opinions advising them of how to behave in certain situations.

What are Colorado judges learning? They learned that they can encourage extensive drinking and have sex with staff members at the courthouse. They learned they’ll get a slap on the wrist and it will all be kept from public view. Colorado judges aren’t learning how to be better judges.

Just two years ago the Colorado legislature was up in arms over sexual harassment allegations against a state legislator, Steve Lebsock. Another legislator, Faith Winter, was the first of four women to file sexual harassment complaints against Lebsock. After emotionally charged proceedings, Lebsock was expelled from the legislature.

Those same legislators that expelled Lebsock are protecting judges who commit similar misconduct by allowing confidential judicial discipline proceedings to continue in Colorado.

The law that makes judicial discipline proceedings confidential in Colorado is in the state constitution. The legislature proposed the current judicial discipline system via a referendum more than fifty years ago. Voters followed the legislature’s lead and endorsed one of the darkest judicial branches in the country.

Legislators should submit another referendum to the people of Colorado that makes judicial discipline proceedings public. Nothing good comes from confidential judicial discipline proceedings. Coloradans are currently signing a petition on our website, judicialintegrity.org, to support public judicial discipline proceedings.

Transparency inspires trust. Coloradans should be able to trust the judicial system. Does a judge who gets his court staff drunk and has sex with one meet your performance standards?

Chris Forsyth is executive director of The Judicial Integrity Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on improving the justice system by advocating for laws that increase transparency, enhance accountability and remove conflicts of interest.