By Peter Hardin | Gavel Grab
Critics of Missouri’s nationally recognized merit system for selecting judges have failed to get enough valid signatures to put the issue before voters this fall.
Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced in a press release on Tuesday that the initiative petition tied to repealing Missouri’s merit system was not certified for the November ballot.
“This cynical attempt to inject special interests into Missouri’s courtrooms was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters,” said Ken Morley, an adviser to the Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund, which fought the petition effort.
“This monumental failure by those wishing to politicize our courts sends a strong message that Missourians want to keep our system of justice fair and impartial.”
ShowMe Better Courts wanted to scrap the state’s judicial appointment system and replace it with competitive partisan elections. The group’s executive director, James Harris, said Tuesday, “We’re very disappointed that Lincoln Strategies failed to collect the requisite number of signatures, but we will continue moving forward and will re-submit the petition in November.”
Harris was referring to a group hired to collect signatures in support of the initiative.
The outcome of Missouri’s heated showdown did not come as a surprise. In May, an analysis of the signatures was carried out by Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts. It concluded the signatures fell short of the minimums required by law (see Gavel Grab). Fair and Impartial Courts is a partner of Justice at Stake.
In the spring, ShowMe Better Courts contended on its website that elections of judges put “the people – not special interest groups or elite legal industry associations – in charge of Missouri’s judiciary.”
The website of Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund stated, “As hard-working Missourians, we need to support a legal system that is not influenced by political pressure or special interests. Over the last 70 years, Missouri has become the model for a fair and impartial court system.”
The secretary of state’s announcement said the merit repeal petition “had a sufficient number of valid signatures in one of the six required Congressional Districts,” and “valid signatures from registered voters equal to eight (8) percent of the total votes cast in the 2008 governor’s election from six of the state’s nine congressional districts must be submitted.”
According to the Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund, the proposed initiative petition was rejected in a bipartisan manner, with some of the most conservative and liberal congressional districts dismissing the proposed constitutional amendment.
Missouri was the first state to adopt merit selection of judges, in 1940. You can learn more about merit selection systems, which combine appointment and retention (up-or-down) elections, from Justice at Stake’s issues page on the topic.
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