The June 16 Toledo Blade has this editorial about Ohio’s current system for electing state judges. Ohio has partisan primaries for judicial posts, and party nominees go on the general election ballot. Oddly, though, there are no party labels for judicial candidates on the November ballot. The editorial criticizes this system and seems to imply that partisan involvement in judicial elections should be entirely ended.
State Supreme Court Judges should not be elected. There is a reason the Supreme Court of the United States is appointed rather than elected. Justices should answer to the Constitutions of their respective states and the United States of America, not to the people. They must do what is right, not what is popular. Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, among many others, were highly unpopular decisions at the time, but Constitutionally they were the right thing to do. If SCOTUS were elected by the people, they probably would have ruled differently. There’s no reason to hold State Supreme Courts to a different standard – it just results in delayed justice. State Supreme Court Justices who do not have to worry about losing reelection are far more likely do issue a correct, but highly unpopular, ruling.
Maryland has a similar system for electing state Circuit Court judges. An unaffiliated voter sued for being excluded from the primaries, but the MD Court of Appeals ruled that these are in fact partisan elections, even though no party labels appear on the general election ballot. Suessmann v. Lamone, 383 Md. 697 (2004).
One consequence of this system is that qualified minor parties can also nominate their own judicial candidates, and the Libertarian Party nominated two in 2004, and they were duly placed on the November ballot.