Meredith Patrick Cord

Meredith Patrick Cord was appointed to the El Paso County Court in 2018 and took office in January 2019. Voters retained her in 2022 with 71.02 percent of the votes cast on the question: 155,732 yes and 63,542 no. Her docket is 90 percent criminal and 10 percent civil. The criminal cases are misdemeanors, about 65 percent of them traffic and DUI cases.

Before her appointment she was a district court magistrate in Colorado Springs for more than four years, handling domestic relations and child support matters. Earlier she practiced family law as a shareholder at Johnson & Cord, P.C., worked as an associate attorney at two firms and was a prosecutor with the Fourth Judicial District Attorney's Office. She holds an undergraduate degree from Ohio State University and a 2001 law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She serves on the board of Court Care for the Pikes Peak Region and on the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline.

The Fourth Judicial District Commission on Judicial Performance voted 10 to 0 that she meets performance standards. It reports an overall survey score of 3.7 out of 4.0, above average for county court judges in the district, from 19 responses: 2 from attorneys and 17 from non-attorneys. The commission writes that the survey results "are statistically invalid due to low response rate" and reports that 18 of the 19 responders believe she meets or exceeds judicial performance standards.

In the commission's words, she "is consistently described as knowledgeable, well-prepared, patient, and fair, and her written opinions reflect a careful command of the law." Commissioners saw her patient approach to the roughly 10 percent of her litigants who need Spanish-language interpretation, and the commission "believes Judge Patrick Cord is a true asset to the Fourth Judicial District."