Texas Judicial Elections Criticized by Newspaper

TheAustin American-Statesman editorializes: “The partisan election of judges is one of the more negative facets of state government, and for decades there have been attempts to change Texas’ judicial election system. We long have supported efforts to take party politics out of judicial elections and to reduce the effect of campaign money on the state’s courts.”

It goes on “Texas is one of only a handful of states that hold partisan judicial elections. Several potential reforms have been explored …..  A perennial and favored proposal is to appoint judges based on merit and then to require them to go before voters a few years later in a nonpartisan, yes-or-no retention election.”  Of course, the devil is in the detail of who gets to “appoint judges based on merit” when reasonable people disagree about which potential judges are more meritorious.