Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have drawn an 'obscene' amount of spending. Here's why and what can be done about it.
State Supreme Court races have become everything they were never meant to be — highly partisan, astronomically expensive national political battles in which the candidates’ ideologies overshadow their qualifications for an office that requires them to swear an oath to “administer justice … faithfully and impartially.”
Several factors are driving the massive spending in Wisconsin, one of 22 states that elect justices rather than appoint them. Reducing the influence of those factors would require changing the state constitution, state law or judicial rules of conduct. The factors include:
Hot-button issues that turn on ideological control of the high court, such as abortion and public employee collective bargaining rights.
Wisconsin’s narrow political divide in its electorate, state government and the high court itself, plus its role as an Electoral College swing state.
- Campaign finance laws and federal court rulings that have loosened limits on money in politics.
- Lax rules for when justices must recuse themselves from cases involving people and organizations that have spent huge sums to elect them.
- Holding court elections in the spring, which grew out of the state’s earliest yearnings for a nonpartisan judiciary but now eliminates competition against campaigns for most other major offices for donations and the public’s attention.
https://communityjournal.net/wisconsin-supreme-court-elections-have-drawn-an-obscene-amount-of-spending-heres-why-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/