judgesonmerit.org

The race for the Michigan Supreme Court is heating up with the candidates having raised more than two million dollars already.  But, as a new report from the Michigan Campaign Finance Network explains, the election is costing much more than that: third party spending on television ads for the candidates is nearly two million dollars to date.  That’s about four million dollars so far to determine who’s going to get a job that is supposed to require fairness and impartiality and that the winner must not appear to favor those who helped him or her get there.

The third parties doing the spending: the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Democratic State Central Committee.  Gavel Grab has good descriptions of and links to some of the ads running in this campaign.  Because their ads don’t directly mention voting, these third-party groups don’t have to report their spending or disclose the source of their finances.  Many see this is a growing problem in judicial elections:

‘The peril in this is that an individual or interest group could secretly spend a million dollars to market a candidate – a very important contribution, and then have that justice vote to select its case and rule on its case,’ said Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. ‘That has considerable potential for conflict of interests and it certainly creates a troubling appearance.’

Pennsylvania faced similar issues last year when an out-of-state group ran “issue ads” marketing a candidate but not directly asking for votes.  The answer is to get money out of the judicial selection process by using a different way to pick judges that doesn’t rely on fundraising, campaigning and television ads.  We think the solution is Merit Selection for the appellate courts.

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