Judges are actually quite important, you'll probably agree if you're ever dragged to court.
I spent an hour deciding who I was going to vote for by going over the ballot I downloaded from my county's website.
Gee, that was hard.
To the original "ask slashdot" posted - In the time it takes you to type up "dear slashdot, my mom says I should vote. What should I DO!?1??2!!1" you could probably have figured out who to vote for. This isn't rocket science.