| By Nation Of Gandhis - Oct 7th, 2008 at 3:26 pm EDT |
Maybe someone has already done this but it needs repeating!
I had some hesitation on researching these items but was very suprised how easy it is to understand and how much little time it took me to become informed.
Print them out, take them to the polls, make notes!
Let's get what WE want. We are the people.
The Issues on the Ohio Ballot:
http://www.bricker.com/legalservices/practice/govern/2007ballot.asp
For the edification of the populace on the separate divisions of the judicial segments, SOS Brunner gives us this page:
http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/jvg/f?p=203:12
The Judges for your specific area and up to the Supreme Court:
http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/jvg/f?p=203:1
This is the government working for the people! Oh, yes and thanks to Bricker and Eckler for their page on the Issues.
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Also, thanks to candidate Peter Sikora, I now am aware that the Ohio Supreme Court is entirely Republican. Didn't know that.
Non-partisan judges? What a joke.
Any confusion over a "non-partisan" elective office is understandable given the heighten rancor of partisan politics. Nonetheless, Ohio has had a long history electing "non-partisan judges" (we do the same for members for Board of Education), as it found favor in the sentiment held by Jacksonian Era populists, that did not trust judges appointed by the "king" (actually, in Ohio it was the legislature, and not the executive branch that did the appointments). We switched to to the election method with the 1851 Constitution, and continued with it in the 1912 Constitution, when progressives secured an amendment that required direct primary nomination of all elective offices, including judges. (see, History of Ohio Law, December 2004, Ohio University Press, pages 211-217).
That being said, the last time any attempt to change our method of selecting judges was made, was 1987 when Issue 3, merit selection of appellate judges, went down in defeat by a 2-1 margin. Merit selection would have established nominating commissions made up of lawyers and non-lawyers to screen qualified candidates for submission to the Governor, who then made a selection. The judge selected by this method, would have later had to stand for a "retention" election to continue in office.
This merit selection attempt had been supported by the Ohio State Bar Association, League of Women Voters, insurance and business interests. Opposition came from the Ohio AFL-CIO, the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers, and both the Democratic and Republican parties. Link
Regardless of who supported or opposed it, as politics do make for strange bedfellows, the bottom line is that Ohioans want to pull the ballot lever themselves on who becomes one of their judges.
By the way, Connor is not a "GOP judge candidate." John Connor was a pretty good Democrat. But Judge Connor has always been his own man, and a damn fine judge in my opinion. And I think that how one should evaluate any judicial candidate, by the qualifications and experience that they have or can bring to the office, and just by mere labels.