Comments

1
I like the appointment-confirmation-ratification system. Governors appoint, legislators confirm, and the the voters have the chance to ratify in the next general election and then again every 4 or 6 years.

You up the chances of getting quality but still have a means to get rid of justices that either never should have been on the bench or who decline as the years go by.
2
As always, all we have to do is amend the state constitution. We mope about this, we mope about car tabs income having to be spent on roads only, but do we move a muscle aside from on the internet? Nope.
3
@1) like that.

@2) Speak for yourself, anonymous internet commenter. Lots of folks hustle--in the media, in their communities, in the legislature, on ballot measure campaigns--to actually get things done. And lo, public discussion promoted by reporting and advocacy is usually the starting ground.
4
I'm not anonymous, I'm pseudonymous. And if you think chastising us (all of us, not you) isn't part of public discussion, you're in the wrong thread.
5
Not to say that race bias wasn't a part of people voting against Gonzalez, but the results of that race were not off from the historic results of similar races: http://olywa.blogspot.com/2012/08/histor…

These would be literally unfunded vs. well-funded candidates for state Supreme Court.
6
Did you see the KCTS special on this?

Looks like not printing primary ballots reduces Red turnout statewide while we Blue counties pay for our own primary voters guides.

Now the Red welfare counties want the Blue counties to pay for theirs too.

... what ever happened to Personal Irresponsibility, Red Welfare Queens?
7
@1, @3:

The key to that system is that the "ratification" (don't you mean retention?) vote is simply the question of whether to retain the judge ... not a battle between candidates about whom the voters know nothing whatsoever.

In most cases, of course, the judge will be retained in that election. But not always.
8
Or we could have public funding of judicial election campaigns.

Then we could still pick the people that we want to define justice for us, instead of having them picked for us from some high-end, insular, out-of-touch, unattainably advanced, technocratic elite pool.

Some of our best US Supreme court justices were never judges before serving. Earl Warren and Louis Brandeis, for starters. So you can take your cabalistic, arbitrary, elitist "qualified" business and shove it.
9
The Stranger's dream of "prefers NAMBLA party" isn't going to appear next to any candidates' profiles in the voter's guide in the near future.

Please wait...

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