In Texas, we elect our judges. And because we have reserved this right for ourselves, we also have the responsibility to exercise it carefully. That means reading up on the judicial races, because their outcomes are important.

Here’s a great example of just how critical being an informed voter is this year. In the Texas Supreme Court Place 9 race, incumbent Justice Eva Guzman is facing a challenge from a perennial candidate who has been publicly reprimanded by the State Bar of Texas.

But because he has a common name – Joe Pool – and Justice Guzman has an uncommon name, he’s currently polling ahead of her among Republican voters. That’s ironic, because all indications are that Sen. Ted Cruz is going to take Texas in the presidential primary and have plenty of coattails.

For Texas conservatives, Justice Guzman is the clear choice. She has extensive experience – from serving on a family court bench in Houston to her tenure on the 14th Court of Appeals to her time on the state Supreme Court, having been appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2009.

She has been a thoughtful, responsible jurist, with a conservative view of the law – she doesn’t legislate from the bench.

“Being conservative as a justice means having the humility to understand that you don’t make the law,” she said. “That is not why people elect us.”

She’s been endorsed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Wallace Jefferson and Sen. John Cornyn, who also served on that bench. She’s also endorsed by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.

For his part, Pool has made numerous attempts to win a Texas Supreme Court seat. We don’t say he has run for them – instead of campaigning in 2014, his strategy was to go to court to get his opponent struck off the ballot. His effort failed, and he lost handily.

The real point here is that it’s our duty to become informed voters. These judicial races aren’t as glamorous as the more prominent races, but they’re important.

“Incumbent justices on the Texas Supreme Court can and do lose the GOP nomination to primary challengers,” wrote Mark Pulliam in National Review. “It happened recently to Justice David Medina in 2012, in an upset financed in large part by Democrat trial lawyer mega-donor Lisa Blue Baron. In 2014, with funding by plaintiffs’ Vioxx lawsuit mogul Mark Lanier, the plaintiffs’ bar unsuccessfully attempted to repeat the feat by challenging three incumbents on the GOP primary ballot.”

Such challengers often hope to benefit from voters’ lack of knowledge about their particular race. They depend a familiar (or familiar-sounding) name, or even on ballot placement (statistics show that being listed first on the ballot can result in as much as 5 percent more votes – a big number in a tight race).

But we can show them that such tactics don’t work in Texas. We can become informed voters.

It’s our choice to elect judges in Texas.

It’s our duty, then, to educate ourselves on the candidates.