MFIC Warns Against Effort to Inject Campaign Money and Politics into Missouri’s Nonpartisan Courts

Proposed Constitutional Amendments Would Throw Out 72 year-old Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan that is Transparent and Accountable to Voters

Originally posted on August 26, 2013

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Unlimited campaign contributions and politics would replace Missouri’s nonpartisan system for choosing judges on the state’s highest courts if one of two proposed constitutional amendments were to pass. Retired judges and a broad coalition of community-based organizations known as Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts urge Missourians to reject this attempt to allow politicians and campaign contributors to replace our nonpartisan courts.

For 70 years, the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan has produced judges who are accountable to the law, the Constitution and the notion of fair and impartial justice for all. The plan secures high-quality judges in the least political way and ultimately gives the people the final say through retention elections.

The proposed constitutional amendments, which were filed with the Secretary of State’s office on Friday, would replace Missouri’s Nonpartisan Court Plan with partisan elections of judges for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of Missouri. If approved, it would replace Missouri’s nonpartisan courts with partisan politics and unlimited campaign money in our courts.

“In other states it generally costs millions of dollars to run for the Supreme Court, but in Missouri it costs nothing,” said retired Missouri Supreme Court Judge John Holstein, who was appointed by Republican Gov. John Ashcroft. “It costs nothing because judges are selected based on their qualifications and then are either kept or thrown out by voters in a retention election where they are judged on their record on the bench.”

According to “The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2009–2010,”election spending on state high court races has soared in recent years, more than doubling from $83.3 million in 1990-1999 to $206.9 million in 2000-2009.

“That kind of money is spent for influence, not good government,” said retired Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ray Price, who was appointed by Republican Gov. John Ashcroft. “Through these attacks on Missouri’s nonpartisan courts, people with power and money are trying to buy the Missouri judiciary and we, as Missourians, should stop them.”

Price and Holstein said money and power brokers are center stage in determining who can run successfully in elections for statewide office.

“The last thing Missourians want or deserve are judges who owe their jobs to campaign contributors,” Price added. “I strongly believe that the loyalty of future Missouri judges should continue to lie with our constitution and rule of law, not with politicians or wealthy special interests.”

States that elect their judges, such as Illinois and West Virginia, highlight the conflicts of interest associated with campaign contributions. One such scandal resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2009 that a West Virginia judge should have disqualified himself from an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy Co. because the company’s CEO had contributed more than $3 million to the judge.

The Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan was approved by voters in 1940 to end the influence of partisan political machines in electing members to our state’s highest courts. This system, often referred to as The Missouri Plan, is a national model and is now used by more than half of the states in the nation after Missouri pioneered this innovative way of selecting judges based on merit and not politics or financial influence.

Missourians have repeatedly turned back attempts to overturn Missouri’s Nonpartisan Court Plan, the most recent was the overwhelming defeat of Amendment 3 in 2012.