Ohio and Michigan have this system only for Supreme
Court Justices. Maryland has it only for the trial
court judges. I am basing this on what I was told by
the ACLU attorney in Maryland who is fighting to
overturn the Maryland system.
--- JJ Gass <jj.gass@nyu.edu> wrote:
Without implying any judgment on the merits of
either state's system, I'd note that Ohio has a
similar method for choosing Supreme Court justices.
(Perhaps an Ohioan on the list can enlighten me as
to whether lower-court judges are also subject to
this system). Candidates run in party primaries,
and the winners of the Democratic and Republican
primaries appear on the general election ballot
without party designation.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Amen to
thatDate: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 22:54:40 -0400From: John
Gear <jmgear@ameritech.net>To:
owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu
(election-law_gl-digest)
At 06:00 PM 4/12/04 -0700, you wrote:>(Disclosure:
I am an outspoken>opponent of so-called nonpartisan
elections. It is nothing more or less>than a
euphemism for pandering to special interests, as the
Washington>Democratic Party v. Reed court implied.
That is to say, all that happens is>that the
partisanship merely takes a different, and more
clandestine, and>frankly more sinister, form.)After
having lived in Michigan for nearly four years now
with its bizarre system of "nonpartisan" Supreme
Court elections, all I can say is "Amen to that."
(In Michigan, candidates for Supreme Court fight for
and some win nomination at Democratic and Republican
party conventions, and then magically undergo a
special invisible cleansing bath that wipes them
free of any taint of partisanship, so no partisan
label appears on the ballot ... oddly enough,
though, their incumbent status *is* noted on
ballots.) J. J. Gass
Associate Counsel, Democracy Program
212-998-6281
jj.gass@nyu.eduBrennan Center for Justice at NYU
School of Law
161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th Floor
fax 212-995-4550
www.brennancenter.org
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