Tortured Logic in Minnesota
October 8, 2010
An editorial in the St. Cloud Times (MN) offers up some tortured logic in support of adopting “merit” selection in Minnesota (hat tip to Leagle). The Times acknowledges that the influence of campaign cash isn’t a problem in the state, but warns that unless Minnesota adopts “merit” selection it risks turning judicial elections into a “battle of special-interest war chests.” As an example of the potential evil that awaits Minnesotans if they don’t give up their democratic right to choose judges themselves, the Times points the finger at … Iowa.
Last time I checked, Iowa used “merit” selection.
Anti-Merit Selection Movement Growing at the Grassroots
September 16, 2010
Concern over the anti-democratic “merit” selection system appears to be growing at the grassroots – the real grassroots, not the phony grassroots manufactured by Justice at Stake and bought and paid for by George Soros’ $45 million+ campaign. A Minnesota branch of the Tea Party is using the American Justice Partnership’s recently released “Justice Hijacked” report (full disclosure: I run AJP) as a rallying cry to educate citizens about the threat from “merit” selection and the need to hold our judges accountable.
Fingerpointing in Minnesota
June 22, 2010
For yet another year, the push to replace democratic judicial elections in Minnesota with “merit” selection and retention elections has failed. Now comes the fingerpointing and recriminations as proponents look for someone to blame for the doomed effort. Politics in Minnesota has the report.
Perhaps the explanation as to why “merit” selection continues to fail in Minnesota is as simple as what was offered by the executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life:
“[The legislation] doesn’t allow grass-roots Minnesotans to be involved in the process, as they are now with direct elections,” he says. “It would place a lot of power in the hands of the few who would advise whether to retain or not retain [a judge]. For those who want to see changes, it’s another obstacle to change.”
My bet is MN state legislators know this, too, and are understandably reluctant to strip voters of their right to participate in choosing who sits on the bench.
Democractic Elections Survive in Minnesota — For Now
June 5, 2010
A bill to abolish contested elections in Minnesota and replace them with up-or-down retention elections is dead – at least for this legislative session. Both Gavel Grab and the Minnesota publication, Finance and Commerce, have accounts of the bill’s demise.
No “Merit” for Minnesota
April 8, 2010
Mark Cohen has a hand-wringer on Minnesota Lawyer blog (h/t GavelGrab) fretting over the “unfettered discretion” the state’s governor has for appointing judges to the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court:
“Minnesota’s only check on the governor’s appointment power is to give voters the chance to vote for someone else in the next election.”
Actually, that sounds like a pretty robust check to me, but Cohen ignores another check. If the voters of Minnesota don’t like a governor’s judicial appointments, they can not only throw the judge out of office, but the governor, too. Because they know voters will be watching, many candidates for governor explicitly campaign on the type of judges they would appoint to the bench.
Contrast that level of public accountability with proposals for replacing Minnesota’s appointment/election hybrid system with so-called “merit” selection, which Cohen seems agnostic about. Under most “merit” selection systems, an unelected committee of elite lawyers meets behind closed doors to select judges, providing a list of acceptable names from which the governor is required to pick. (I realize that Minnesota’s “merit” panel for District Court judges cannot force a governor to choose from its list, but this is highly unusual; in most states the governor is bound by the “merit” commission’s slate.)
Cohen concedes that the current judicial selection system in Minnesota has produced good judges and the state Supreme Court “has maintained its excellent, nonpartisan reputation.” If it ain’t broke, why fix it – especially when the fix would diminish the accountability of judges to the public they serve?
Keeping An Eye On The Secretary Of State Project
October 1, 2009
The Secretary of State Project is rattling the tin cup for Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and SOS challengers Debra Bowen in California and Jocelyn Benson in Michigan. The hope is that Bowen and Benson can do what Ritchie did in Minnesota: tip close elections, such as the Franken-Coleman race, in favor of their preferred candidate.
Ritchie, of course, was elected with SOS Project funding and quickly abandoned any pretense of running fair elections. According to Jeff Davis, president of the legislative watchdog group Minnesota Majority, Ritchie blocked an investigation of ACORN, which had endorsed him, despite evidence of “a number of irregularities” in Minnesota voter records - little things like dead people and convicted felons registering from prison. I guess the 2008 election was a two-fer for Ritchie as far as the SOS Project was concerned: He kept ACORN in the game and played a major role in tilting the election to Al Franken.
Like other groups funded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros - such as Justice at Stake - the SOS Project poses as a non-partisan, good government organization whose only ambition is to ensure clean elections. And, as with other Soros-bankrolled groups, this pose is used to shield the deeply partisan nature of the organization. I wonder if Bowen and Benson know that sweeping ACORN’s fraudulent activities under the rug is part of the job description for candidates taking $$ from the SOS Project.
More ACORN Allies Abandon Ship
September 30, 2009
Senator Al Franken - who once gushed that he was “more motivated than ever to work with ACORN” - has finally “got religion” according to Katherine Kersten, writing in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Franken joined 83 other Senators in voting to slash funds for the disgraced group, but President Obama has refused to say whether he’d sign legislation to remove ACORN from the federal trough.
Kersten alludes to ACORN’s role in helping Franken sneak into the Senate, nothing that ACORN “is best-known for its massive voter-registration campaigns, which focus relentlessly on getting Democrats elected in target states.” All true, but she neglects to mention allegations by the legislative watchdog group Minnesota Majority concerning “a number of irregularities” in Minnesota’s voter registration records - including the registration of dead people and convicted felons at a time when ACORN was bragging about registering 80,000 new voters in time for the 2008 elections.
Calls for an investigation were quickly quashed by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, whose campaign was bankrolled in part by the Secretary of State Project - a political operation funded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros to help sway close elections to liberal Democrats.
Do ACORN and the Secretary of State Project have any formal working relationship? Can’t say - but they are certainly toiling in the same vineyards.
More Questions About Minnesota
June 2, 2009
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie faces a new lawsuit from a group of citizens and state legislators over his handling (or mishandling) of 2008 election results, reports Jeff Davis, president of the legislative watchdog group Minnesota Majority. In a Washington Examiner article, Davis calls attention to the “significant mismatch” between the number of ballots cast in the 2008 election and the number of voters in the statewide system. Ritchie himself admits the mismatch may be as high as 40,000 votes – more than enough to tip the contested Coleman-Franken Senate battle.
Davis notes that the problem surfaced last October 2008 when “a number of irregularities were discovered in Minnesota’s voter registration records” – like dead people and convicted felons registering to vote from prison. According to Davis:
“During this same time, ACORN was taking credit for registering more than 80,000 new voters in preparation for the 2008 election. Unlike other states that are now actively investigating and prosecuting ACORN for fraudulent election activity, Minnesota has done nothing. Allegations of wrong-doing were swiftly squashed by Minnesota’s ACORN-endorsed attorney general and Ritchie.”
Ahhhh … ACORN, the group which seems to pop up wherever dead people start voting.
As I reported on 5/14, Ritchie was elected with the financial backing of the George Soros-funded Secretary of State (SOS) Project – a national campaign specifically launched to help shift votes toward sharply partisan Democrats in close elections. It seems that sweeping ACORN’s fraudulent shenanigans under the rug is becoming an uncomfortable, but necessary, part of the job description for candidates seeking the $$ of the SOS Project.
The SOS Project, Mark Ritchie and the Coleman-Franken Race
May 14, 2009
As I posted yesterday, I’ll be following the Secretary of State (SOS) Project – another organization bankrolled by billionaire hedge fund kingpin George Soros aimed at pushing American politics sharply to the left. Like Justice at Stake – which works to give special interest groups like the trial bar more influence over who sits on state courts – the SOS Project poses as a non-partisan, “good government” reform effort. The truth is, the SOS Project is committed to electing sharply partisan Democrats who they believe can help shift votes in close elections to their favored candidates.
Consider Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, elected in 2006 with the financial backing of the SOS Project. One of the critical roles for Secretaries of State is to oversee elections and serve as an impartial arbiter while overseeing recounts in disputed contests. Yet shortly it became obvious that the Coleman-Franken Senate race was headed for a long, drawn-out recount, Ritchie went on national TV and accused Coleman’s campaign of trying “to win at any price.”
The Coleman campaign said Ritchie’s partisan comments showed he couldn’t govern the recount process fairly, but don’t listen to them. Here’s what Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten had to say (emphasis added):
“Let’s assume the 32 disputed ballots in Minneapolis were legitimate. Let’s assume the newly discovered 100 votes in Pine County — all for Al Franken — were just overlooked by a sleepy official, and the 100 votes found in Mountain Iron — again, all for Franken — were valid.
“Let’s suppose the trickle of votes moving inexorably in Franken’s direction is just a function of a normal process, as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office assures us.
“One fact remains troubling. The referee in Minnesota’s hotly contested Senate race must act in a nonpartisan fashion, yet Ritchie came to office through a nationwide partisan strategy. He was elected in 2006 as part of a national campaign to ensure that Democrats could wield influence in precisely the sort of hair’s breadth race we now have here.
“Ritchie gained office with the help of the Secretary of State Project (SOS), an independent 527 group co-founded by former MoveOn.org leader James Rucker. SOS is based in San Francisco, and is funded in part by ultra-liberal kingmakers such as George Soros.
“Secretary of state positions are a “new front” in the “battle for political control,” the paper explained, because they are “the obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted.”
Ritchie has also come under attack for his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the same group that figured in voting issues in Ohio in the Presidential election last year. Trent England in the pages of the Wall Street Journal described the group as “a group under investigation in several states for suspected voter registration chicanery.”
If any of this happened under a Republican watch, you can bet the Democrats would be crying “dirty tricks.” When it helps Democrats can get to the magic number of 60 seats in the U.S. Senate, no one seems to mind. Tilting close elections like Minnesota’s in their favor is exactly why the SOS Project is spending millions to assure that left-leaning Democrats control these offices.
Among The Elites In Minnesota
March 11, 2009
A campaign is on to strip Minnesota voters of their right to choose state judges – a right enshrined in Article VI, Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution. Our friends over at Gavel Grab/Justice at Stake – the group funded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros that is lobbying to abolish democratic judicial elections across America – have a thumb-sucker on the attempt to shift the power to select judges away from the people toward a tiny tribunal of lawyers.
Well-funded groups (like Justice at Stake) are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would “require all judges to submit to periodic professional performance reviews.” Actually, Minnesota judges are already “required” to submit to performance reviews: In a democracy, we call these “reviews” elections.
But a “performance review” isn’t really what Justice at Stake has in mind. The Quie Commission – named after former Minnesota Governor Al Quie – wants to set up two more commissions: A Judicial Performance Review Commission and an Appellate Court Merit Selection Commission.
The Judicial Performance Review Commission will consist of 30 people that “must be respected individuals of outstanding character and integrity and reflect the diversity of the state.” This august panel will have a majority of non-lawyers, but does anyone doubt that when these 30 “respected individuals” convene to pass judgment on a judge’s performance that William the Attorney won’t have more influence than Bill the Mechanic?
Actually, Bill the Mechanic probably won’t be allowed into the smoke-filled room because neither the Governor nor the Chief Justice, who will make all the appointments, will likely consider him, ummmm, “respected” enough to evaluate judges. Minnesota Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, after all, is on record as saying you “need to have a certain level of experience and insight and sophistication to be able to say that a judge got that [ruling] right.” Sorry, Bill.
But don’t judges – like any other public official – serve Bill the Mechanic as much as William the Attorney? Read more