2008 Woodie Awards
Judge selection questioned
Elizabeth Mitchell
Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: News
|
Speaking to members of the Northfield-Cannon Falls chapter of the League of Women Voters, as well as various students and community members, Quie discussed what he sees as the problems of electing judges through a partisan, contested election and his commission's suggested solutions to these issues.
Quie has worked on the dilemma of keeping courts impartial for years, and his commission has suggested that the current practice of electing judges through competitive, partisan elections should be ended. Instead, he suggested that judges should go through a review process, and that rather than competitive elections, judges should face retention elections in which voters would vote for or against each candidate rather than voting for only one.
Quie's reasoning for the elimination of competitive elections for judges is multifaceted.
One reason he cited was the problem of outside funding in elections; in several recent judicial elections, millions of dollars were spent, most of which was spent not by the candidates themselves. In a 2007 election Quie said that only $1.7 million were raised by the candidates while $6.3 million were spent.
Also, Quie does not believe that elections should be held for judges in the same way as they are for other positions because people often do not know who all, or even any, of the candidates are.
"There are 10 people on the ballot … that's what it is all over," he said.
A former Minnesota judge agreed with Quie's suggestion to eliminate competitive elections.
"I was a judge for 42 years … it's important we keep politics out of it … if someone ran against me against an issue I'd be defeated ... but that [issue] has nothing to do with my daily life in the courts," he said.
Be the first to comment on this story