This AP story, dated December 11, discusses the push by retired Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Sandra Day O’Connor and many others to persuade states not to elect state court judges any longer. One reason is that when judges must be elected, they need campaign contributions. That, in turn, means that they appear indebted to the people who give them large campaign contributions, and sometimes those individuals are in court before those judges.
It does seem to be true that appointed judges do a better job than elected judges. The best state court decisions involving constitutional issues concerning the treatment of minor party and independent candidates, during the last fifteen years, have come from New Jersey state courts. All New Jersey state court judges are appointed. New Jersey trial level courts and mid-level appellate courts have struck down numerous laws that discriminated against minor parties. Laws have been struck down that banned voters from registering into unqualified parties, laws that inhibited who can circulate petitions, and laws that treated qualified parties more favorably than unqualified parties in matters of campaign finance.
By contrast, the worst state court decisions involving those issues in the last fifteen years have come from the Pennsylvania state courts. All Pennsylvania state court judges are elected on a partisan basis. Pennsylvania state courts during the period 2004 through the present have consistently upheld a unique system in which candidates who try to petition, and fail to get enough valid signatures, can be charged with up to $80,000 in court fees.
Pennsylvania state courts also removed a Reform Party candidate in 2003 from the ballot under a law that had already been declared unconstitutional by the 3rd circuit in 1999. The state court said, “Decisions of intermediate federal courts are not binding on state courts.” However, when a federal court declared a state law unconstitutional, and no appeal is taken, that law is void and cannot be enforced.
And, Pennsylvania state courts are the only courts in the nation that consistently uphold a county distribution requirement for statewide candidate petitions, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against such requirements and reiterated that decision, Moore v Ogilvie, in Bush v Gore.
How senile EVIL has O’Connor become ???
She will be INFAMOUS for her raving about *appearance of corruption* in one more JUNK campaign finance case that has had a temporary effect of subverting the 1st Amdt.
Have the EVIL leftwing/rightwing party hacks appoint party hack State judges — like appointing the party hack extremist U.S.A. Supremes — who are TOTALLY political in any *political* case — i.e. Bush v. Gore 2000 ???
RE PA courts violating the U.S.A. Constitution — How about a zillion U.S.A. criminal indictments and/or civil rights cases to get damages to bankrupt the MORON PA judges involved ???
Hmm. Moore v Ogilvie seems to have been based on the fact that Illinois law up to that point had treated counties of vastly different populations the same for purposes of ballot-qualification petition signatures.
Michigan law (MCL 168.685) requires a party wanting to get on the ballot to collect a number of signatures equal to 1% of the total of votes cast for governor at the previous general election — currently 38,013 at least. But there is also a requirement that the petition include signatures from “at least 100 registered electors in each of at least 1/2 of the congressional districts of the state.” Now, that does blunt the gross-population Equal Protection argument considerably. But there is a wide disparity in population density among the districts, of course — see:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress_state_16757_7.pdf
Still, would it be enough of a relative hardship for people in the sparser districts to organize a new party (say, one that wanted the Upper Peninsula and perhaps some select Northern Lower Michigan counties to form the new State of Superior) that they might make a case against this lesser distribution-of-signatures requirement?
Oh — and as for judges, we do elect them in Michigan. The elections are on a non-partisan basis . . . except that the Supreme Court justice candidates are nominated by parties, even though the race is officially on the non-partisan section of the ballot. (?!)
I don’t really see the benefit to electing judges (or prosecutors either). A legislator or executive runs on an actual platform. When the next election comes around, they can be judged on whether or not they put the platform into effect and, if they did, how it worked. Elected judges basically run on I’m a great guy and I’m tough on crime. But as a society that already has among the world’s highest incarceration rates, do we necesarily want tough on crime (or soft on crime, for that matter)? What we really want in a judge or prosecutor is fair and impartial and out to see justice done. And unless you are in the court on a regular basis, how do you judge that?
Constitutional challenges to distribution requirements based on US House districts always fail, because they had equal populations when they were formed in the year after the Census.
But county distribution requirements always get thrown out, except in Pennsylvana state courts. Even after a federal judge in Pennsylvania invalidated the county distribution requirement for a candidate seeking a place on the Democratic presidential primary, the Pennsylvania legislature repealed the county distribution requirement, but only for president and U.S. Senate. They still exist, and are still enforced, for statewide state office. These are petitions for primary ballot access, not general election ballot access.
#5 Registered voters sign petitions (UNEQUAL in each U.S.A. Rep. gerrymander district) — NOT census persons (which currently includes lots of ILLEGAL aliens in more and more gerrymander districts).
So what is the U.S.A. District Attorney doing regarding the MORON laws, election bureaucrats and judges in PA — that are in an obvious conspiracy to subvert the Supremacy Clause in the U.S.A. Constitution ???
A subversion akin to the attempted subversion in 1861-1865 by the EVIL slave State regimes.
The ENTIRE ballot access stuff is brain dead A to Z due to armies of brain dead party hack MORON lawyers and the super party hacks in the U.S.A. Supremes
— who are zombie brain dead incapable of detecting what *equal* means in 14th Amdt, Sec. 1 — regardless of the horrific Civil WAR I in 1861-1865 and the infamous Black Codes in 1865-1866 in the ex-slave regimes. TOTAL EVIL.
Have distribution requirements based on US House districts also been upheld for statewide initiative petitions?
Mississippi’s initiative process still requires a certain number of signatures from each of the former FIVE US House districts, despite the fact that there are now only FOUR such districts.
Have there been any court rulings on this latter feature?
To Richard @5: Thanks for answering my question @2. I have a follow-up, though — do you know if any of the challengers argued based on sheer geographical or population-density differences?
(If so, and it was rejected, then I suppose the argument in a case related to Steve Rankin @7 would have to be based on looking back to see how far the population of the old districts has diverged . . . are there still old maps, and more recent Census counts or estimates, from which 5-district population figures could be calculated? Or would plaintiffs have to do that for themselves?)