U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) here says he will introduce a constitutional amendment to provide that the voters of the nation could vote to retain or reject U.S. Supreme Court Justices every eight years.

This is a revolutionary idea. The United States has never held a national election. All elections in U.S. history have always been statewide, or lesser geographical units, never national. In presidential elections, each state’s voters choose presidential electors for that state; there is no single election for President in a technical sense. The United States has never had a national referendum or a national advisory vote.

In order to hold a retention election for U.S. Supreme Court justices, one presumes there would need to be a national election law determining voter qualifications. Currently voter qualifications are determined by each state, even for federal office. That is why ex-felons can’t vote in some states but they can vote in other states. That is why 17-year-olds can vote in federal primaries in some states but not other states. It will be interesting to see if Senator Cruz’s constitutional amendment proposes a uniform rule on who is eligible to vote. It would also be interesting to see what the campaign finance rules would be for members of the Court, if they had to run in retention elections. Recently the Court upheld a Florida rule barring state court judges, or candidates for a state judicial office, from asking for campaign contributions.

It is likely that all members of the U.S. Supreme Court would look on this proposed amendment with disdain. And it is not difficult to imagine that many voters who views are utterly different from Senator Cruz would still support his amendment. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

On June 25, the Sixth Circuit expedited O’Toole v O’Connor, 15-3614. The case had been filed by Colleen O’Toole, who is running for Ohio State Supreme Court Justice in the March 2016 Republican primary. Ohio elects State Supreme Court Justices with partisan elections, although party labels are not printed on the general election ballot. Ohio law does not let candidates for this office raise campaign contributions until four months before the primary.

On June 3, the U.S. District Court had refused to enjoin that restriction. O’Toole has almost no money in her campaign treasury and the incumbents she will be running against have hundreds of thousands of dollars in their campaign treasuries, mostly money that was raised in past campaigns and not spent. The U.S. District Court Judge had refused to enjoin the law because he believes the state has an interest in restricting judges and their campaign committees from raising money during most time periods because it seems unseemly for judges to be raising money.

The Nation has this article about Jill Stein, which includes quotes from her.

Here is an article about Stein at ThinkProgess.