judgesonmerit.org

As we reported last week, voters in Greene County, Missouri voted this year to switch from electing their local judges to a Merit Selection system.  Thomas M. Burke, President of the Missouri Bar, analyzes the decision in an editorial in the News-Leader:

Why switch now? While a number of reasons were presented to voters, the most compelling stem from the campaigns that judicial candidates must run to gain name recognition. Greene County has a population of about 260,000 and is one of Missouri’s fastest growing counties. Partisan elections of judges were becoming more expensive to run. In a recent Republican primary about $200,000 was raised by candidates and their supporters.

Lawyers who regularly appear in front of these judges are faced with a no-win situation, frequently being asked to donate to a judge’s campaign. Having judges, businesses and other groups donate to the election of a judge who may decide your case creates the appearance of impropriety and raises suspicions of influence on judicial decisions.

Burke’s piece offers a clear assessment of the reasons the campaign for Merit Selection was successful in Greene County.  He concisely explains that this isn’t a philosophical or theoretical issue, but a practical question based on the facts of what judicial elections have become:

Greene County citizens are to be commended — not because their judges will be selected under the nonpartisan court plan, but for recognizing the potential danger to the integrity of the courts in their growing community.

This approach makes sense.  Let the public take a good look at judicial elections and let the voters decide whether it still makes sense to choose judges this way.

Congratulations to Greene County, MO which yesterday voted to adopt a Merit Selection plan for local judges. KY3 News reports that Greene County is the fourth Missouri county to adopt the plan for its local judges.

And congratulations to Johnson County, KS where voters defeated an effort to change from a Merit Selection system to an electoral system.  The Kansas City Star reports that unofficial results demonstrate that voters “overwhelmingly” voted against the measure to change the way judges are selected. Greg Musil, working with Johnson Countians for Justice, to defeat the ballot measure had this reaction:

Our message from the start was the system is not broken and the change to a political system bring so many risks into our efforts to dispense justice that voters ought to reject it. . . . Sixty percent of the voters figured that out and said we’re not going to turn our judges into political animals.

The critical element of these stories is that voter in Johnson County and Greene County were given the opportunity to make the decision about judicial selection.  That’s what we’ve been asking for in Pennsylvania — that Pennsylvania voters be given the chance to weigh in on whether to change the way we pick our appellate court judges.  We hope they will get that chance.

The News-Leader in Springfield, MO, has come out in favor of Merit Selection for Greene County.  Describing the reasons the editorial board is supporting the change from partisan elections, the editorial first quotes a former local attorney:

[T]he current partisan system for electing judges in Greene County just doesn’t feel right. . . .  ‘It puts lawyers in a really bad position,’ [Shawn] Askinosie said, ‘and, frankly, it puts judges in a really bad position, too.’

That opinion, from a lawyer-turned-businessman who really had nothing to gain when he recently decided to speak to our Community Editorial Advisory Board, is not to be dismissed lightly.

It helped sway us toward support for a new way of selecting judges in Greene County.

Although we are advocating reform only at the appellate level in Pennsylvania, we are watching the events in Greene County.  We wish the reformers luck in their upcoming referendum, and we hope Pennsylvanians will soon get their own chance to weigh in on how we should select appellate judges.