judgesonmerit.org

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.

We’ve been following the efforts of Johnson County, KS to maintain its local Merit Selection system in the face of an upcoming referendum to replace the system with partisan elections.  The Shawnee Dispatch offers an analysis of the views of those supporting and opposing the ballot measure.

Tim Kolba of Kansas Judicial Review, the group advocating for the elimination of the Merit Selection system claims that “left-leaning attorneys” dominate the current process.  Greg Musil, working with Johnson Countians for Justice — the group seeking to defeat the change and preserve Merit Selection — says Kolba and Kansas Judicial Review are motivated by a desire to get more conservative judges on the bench.

Gavel Grab is following the situation in Johnson County closely, and we will continue to do so as well.  For now, suffice it to say that we think that the key issues are how to get the most qualified, fair and impartial judges on the bench and how to keep judges out of the fundraising business.  The answer is Merit Selection.