If you’ve driven around Montana much recently, you can’t help but see campaign signs popping up like dandelions on a warm spring day.  I’ve done “sign duty” for several campaigns over the years, and it is  fun to go on the road with a friend, take a bunch a signs, a list, supplies, and drive around putting up signs along the way.

Although it’s fun to put the signs up, it’s not that much fun to take them down after the candidate you supported with your time, effort, and money loses.  But that’s democracy…and life – there are always winners and losers.

Seeing the signs popping up gets my political juices flowing!  But then I see a sign or billboard for a judge and wonder why states, like Montana, still elect judges.  That’s the reason for this column today.

A high school friend (Ken Garten) who has been an attorney for several years in Missouri recently wrote a column for the local newspaper he titled, “Keep politics out of selecting judges.”  It got me thinking.  You can read the column HERE.

Before I get started, please understand that this column is written as an outsider – I am not an attorney (I don’t play one on television, either) and I don’t have too many friends (I don’t run with that crowd) who are in that line of work.  About the only time I see a judge is when I am chosen for jury duty.  I am just an outsider who sees the current system in need of repair.

Way back in 1940, the state of Missouri developed a plan (initially called Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan – now called the Missouri Plan) where a non-partisan commission reviewed candidates for a judicial vacancies.  The commission then sends the Governor a list of candidates they find most qualified.  The Governor has a specified period of time to make a pick and if the Governor fails to make a selection, the commission selects the judge.  In Missouri, according to this article, for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals judges the commission is called the “Appellate Judicial Commission”  and it is “composed of three lawyers elected by the lawyers of The Missouri Bar (the organization of all lawyers licensed in this state), three citizens selected by the governor, and the chief justice, who serves as chair.”

Supposedly, over 30 states use something like the Missouri Plan.

After the judge is in office for one year, they face a “retention election” which gives voters a chance to get rid of them and then periodic retention elections after that (depending on their term and level of judgeship).

Of course there are people who don’t like this plan or even some of the plans that are been adapted from the original Missouri Plan.  In his column, Garten writes, “The problem is that a group of people with lots of money to influence politicians also wants the Missouri Plan changed or abolished so that they can use that money to influence judges, too.”

For me, I hold judges in higher regard than other politicians.  I think it somewhat soils the judgeship when they are out and about raising money and campaigning.

Attorneys who frequently appear in front of judges may feel some pressure to throw a campaign donation to the person running for judge – just to grease the skids.  If there’s an open court seat (for example in District Court Judge District 08 Department 1 in Great Falls there are four candidates), you might be donating to all of them – you want to have all the bases covered, right?

On the other hand, if you are the judge and you find out that attorney “John Doe” maxed out in giving donations to your opponent…

Of course, judges swear an oath and all that, but don’t we really want them to be as truly independent as possible – don’t we want (as much as possible) to keep politics out of the judiciary?

I think we do…