judgesonmerit.org

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.