No candidate received a majority of votes to fill one of the three vacancies for associate court judge in St. Clair County, so a runoff is scheduled to determine who will fill the spot.

The other two vacancies will be filled by Joseph D. Christ and Christopher T. Kolker, state court officials announced late Wednesday.

Christ, a prosecutor with the St. Clair County State's Attorney's Office, received his undergraduate degree in 1986 from Illinois State University and his law degree from Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich.

Christ said, "I am honored to be chosen out of the 29 other candidates. It's the icing on the public service career I have had serving as a prosecutor for almost 18 years."

Kolker, who is in private practice in Belleville, received his undergraduate degree in 1989 from Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., and his law degree in 1998 from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Kolker declined to comment.

There were 29 candidates who applied for the associate judgeships. The associate judgeship vacancies were created by the election of Zina Cruse, Vincent Lopinot and Andrew Gleeson to the circuit bench.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's East St. Louis Chapter President Stanley Franklin said he hoped that at least one of the vacancies would be filled by an African-American candidate.

Cruise is black and Kolker and Christ are both white.

There are three black applicants for the remaining associate judge position: William Clay IV, Levander Smith and Ethan Skaggs.

"There are three qualified African-American candidates that applied for the judgeship," Franklin said. "Ideally, at least two of those vacancies would have been filled by African-Americans so the court would be reflective of the community it serves and for the sake of diversity on the bench."

Contact reporter Beth Hundsdorfer at bhundsdorfer@bnd.com or 618-239-2570.