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If there’s a single message in voters’ twin decisions last Tuesday regarding Hawaii’s judicial system, it’s this:

They want more control over how judges are selected and evaluated in a state where those processes are decidedly removed from the electorate.

In fact, voters may want so much more control that future ballot measures will be required.

One of the constitutional amendments on Tuesday’s ballot was a real no-brainer, as evidenced by its 82 percent support. It requires public disclosure of the names of people chosen as finalists for judgeships by the Judicial Selection Committee.

The benefits of that bit of transparency seem so obvious that one might wonder why it needed to be written into the constitution — except that Gov. Neil Abercrombie refused to identify finalists for a seat on the Hawaii Supreme Court in 2011.

The governor was considering whether to appeal a Circuit Court order to release the names when the Judicial Selection Committee changed its rules and disclosed the information itself.

Of course those rules could have been changed again if voters hadn’t settled the issue. Case closed with a verdict in favor of transparency.

Voters were nearly as adamant in rejecting a second constitutional amendment, this one proposing to raise the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 80.

There were convincing arguments on both sides of this one. Clearly some judges are capable of performing at a high level well into their 70s and are currently being forced out by a bit of constitutional age discrimination.

The longer those judges serve, however, the less opportunity for new blood that might rejuvenate Hawaii’s judicial system.

With these rules, it’s no wonder voters stomped on the proposal to allow their judges to serve even longer.

Ultimately, the 73 percent to 22 percent rejection may well have come down to this: Voters don’t trust the current system to get rid of bad judges, and raising the age limit could mean those bad judges would stick around longer.

The citizenry is disenfranchised from Hawaii’s judicial selection and evaluation system every step of the way.

In some states, judges are elected just like other public officials and serve for terms as short as four years. Here, they are appointed by the governor or the chief justice of the Supreme Court and serve 10-year terms.

And in some states where, like Hawaii, judges are appointed instead of elected, voters still get a crack at them in retention elections when their terms expire. Here, sitting judges can notify the Judicial Selection Commission that they want to stay on the job and win appointment to another 10-year term with nary a public vote cast.

With these rules, it’s no wonder voters stomped on the proposal to allow their judges to serve even longer.

The fact remains that Hawaii judges are far less accountable to the public than those in many other states.

It’s time to start looking at other options, such as a system that allows voters to decide whether to keep a judge on the bench — after a four- or six-year term. A decade seems like an awfully long time to wait before a judge comes up for reconsideration.

We’re currently at one extreme on the spectrum, and there’s a lot of middle ground that is worth exploring.