The News & Observer had an amusing editorial yesterday in which they argued against making judicial elections partisan. They make this claim even though they admit that judicial elections had always been partisan until 15 years ago when the Democrats didn’t like the success Republicans were having at the polls and decided to manipulate the system to remove party labels on ballots.
Now, with Republicans wanting to restore judicial elections to being partisan again, the N & O is up in arms (see HB 64 and SB 47).
Currently, voters have very little information about judges. The most important piece of information they could have is party label. They also would be able to vote for judges on a straight-party-ticket ballot.
There’s hand-wringing over requiring proper ID to vote, yet there’s not much concern over denying voters critical information necessary for them to make informed choices when they vote.
There’s plenty of justification for IDs (i.e. legitimacy of elections) without any costs to voters (IDs are free), whereas there is no legitimate justification for restricting information on party affiliation. For example, the notion that somehow partisan elections will undermine judicial independence isn’t supported by past experience nor does it change the fact that judicial elections already are political in nature.
If we are concerned with voter rights, the state prohibiting invaluable information from being communicated to voters in order to benefit one party is something that we should genuinely be concerned about.