ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  -- Fellow Democrats joined Gov. David Paterson and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in criticizing the lack of diversity in the short list of candidates to be New York's next chief judge, citing the absence of women and Hispanics.

Paterson asked Cuomo on Wednesday to investigate legal alternatives, saying he was ``outraged'' that the Commission on Judicial Nomination could find no qualified women. The 12-member panel submitted a winnowed list of seven candidates Monday from which Paterson by law must choose his nominee by Jan. 15, subject to Senate confirmation.

Assemblyman Peter Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, said he wants the governor to request the resignations of some commission members -- who include a few appointed by former Republican Gov. George Pataki -- and get a new list of possible judges.

``I'm asking him to ask some of those individuals to resign because they may not be in tune with the kind of court the governor would like to see at the end of the day,'' Rivera said. ``It looks like the deck was stacked against women and against Hispanics if you ask me.''

Commission Chairman John O'Mara said the panel does outreach, does extensive interviews, reviews records and rates applicants' character, temperament, professional aptitude and experience. ``The Commission has recommended numerous women for nomination to the court,'' he said, but acknowledged the process is imperfect and they welcome the opportunity to work with Paterson to examine it.

Albany Law School professor Vincent Bonventre, a court watcher, said it's ironic that the selection process should be examined when it produced an ``outstanding'' list of candidates, which he said has not always been true.

``I'm not a politician so I don't have to be concerned about political correctness as much as they do, but it's impossible to conclude there aren't some great legal minds out there who wouldn't make some great Court of Appeals judges,'' Bonventre said.

Court officials said they could not recall the panel changing its list since the state Constitution was amended to replace elections with a merit selection system in 1977. The commission consists of 12 unpaid appointees, four named by the chief judge, four by the governor and four by majority and minority Senate and Assembly leaders. Paterson has appointed one.

Rivera said he knew of at least two, and possibly four, women who applied for consideration in what is supposed to be a confidential review process.

Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, the first and only Hispanic on the Court of Appeals, was among those seeking the post after Chief Judge Judith Kaye, now 70, retires Dec. 31. Ciparick, first appointed in 1993 and now in her second term, is its senior associate. She has to retire in five years.

Kaye became the first woman on the seven-member court when she was appointed 25 years ago by then Gov. Mario Cuomo. Now one of four women on the court, she was named its first female chief judge 15 years ago.

Rivera added that in New York there relatively few Hispanics among New York's nearly 1,200 judges, and no administrative judges, which are powerful positions.

State Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she was ``profoundly distressed'' by the list for its incompleteness, but doubted the Senate would reject a candidate from it. ``Without impeaching the qualifications of those on the list, I find it incomprehensible that not a single woman, nor a single Latino candidate appears on the list,'' she said.

The Democrats will hold a narrow majority in the Senate next year.

The commission list included four state appeals court judges and three prominent lawyers in private practice, all deemed ``well qualified.''

Paterson said the seven lawyers listed are ``highly qualified'' and the state Constitution says the governor ``shall choose'' from the list.

``I won't disobey the rules of the Constitution. However, I will explore my options, and I have asked the attorney general to explore what our options are,'' Paterson said. ``The issue is that I don't accept that there wasn't a woman in this state that wasn't qualified to serve on the Court of Appeals and that for some reason that this process was unable to find one.''

``We've had this problem before in our society, and this is something that concerns me,'' the governor said.

He added that he had ``no real desire'' to ask the commission to repeat the process. It's restricted by law from adding more than seven names, and he doesn't want those listed to suffer in this process.

Attorney General Cuomo said he agreed with Paterson the list is ``flawed,'' and that the governor should be able to choose from qualified men and women in making his choice. ``Something is wrong with either the process or the legislation or the way it was administered,'' he said.

``We will be exploring the available legal options, discussing with the governor and his team, and deciding which way to go,'' Cuomo said.

Peter Kiernan, counsel to Paterson, said the commission failed to submit a required report to the governor on its deliberations, providing instead only brief biographies of the seven men. He said the panel should have done more outreach to produce a wider pool of applicants, and the limit of seven names may be a constitutional flaw and could be expanded by law in the future.

The seven candidates named by the nominating commission were Court of Appeals associate judges Theodore Jones Jr. and Eugene Pigott Jr., Appellate Division justices Jonathan Lippman and Steven Fisher, and attorneys George Carpinello of Albany and Evan Davis and Peter Zimroth, both of New York City.