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In today’s San Antonio Current, local attorney and columnist Aaron Haas laments the use of judicial elections as a means of choosing judges in his home state. Haas recounts instances of judicial incompetence he has encountered while practicing and suggests that this, in part, may be a result of what he sees as a backwards system.

When the candidates are simply names on a ballot, the election will be determined more by money, organization, style, and attitude, than by any of the qualities we actually want in judges. Our antiquated system of choosing judges is a relic of a previous time, but its consequences today are all too real.

Haas may as well have been describing the current state of affairs in our own Pennsylvania. With at least $4.5 million (and probably much more once political party spending is accounted for) spent in the latest Supreme Court election, the effect of money in judicial elections is undeniable. But for those millions spent, mainly on advertising, little concrete information about the candidates was readily available to the public.

While there are many excellent, well-qualified judges on the bench, they are there despite the current system, not because of it. Elections are simply not designed to find the most qualified, fair and impartial judges.

By switching to Merit Selection for the appellate courts, Pennsylvanians could be assured that the judges deciding their cases reached the bench because they possessed the right qualifications and not because of campaign donations or clever campaign ads.

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