This is an important decision with far-reaching implications. I hope you will think about it carefully before you cast your vote. The proposal being put forward by a few is that judges should be elected in a partisan election, like other political officeholders. In my opinion this is a very bad idea. The thought of our judges having to solicit money from lawyers or other people who will later appear in their court is appalling to me.
Justice is too important for that.
The very nature of the work judges do requires them to be fair, impartial and free of influences of special interest groups, campaign supporters or any other persons. When you have a case in court, you will want this kind of fairness and impartiality and so do we all. In addition, these days the law, like every other subject, requires considerable education, training and experience to administer well. Our current system of judicial selection, in which candidates for judge are screened for intelligence, aptitude, character and ability, provides us the best chance for obtaining qualified and capable judges. Finally, this system guarantees an election every four years for the public to vote against any judge who does not perform as predicted.