Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Elections v. Appointments?

Over at the MJB blog, there's a lot of talk about the state judicial elections and which judges are drawing opposition. The whole election of judges thing* is amazing to me. Judges aren't really permitted to campaign, except to post lots of signs around town. There is no debating the issues. There is no platform. There is just who has the better and more electable name. Seems silly...

We have it much better over here, don't we?

*Even more amazing to me is that our state PD has to run for election. How do you campaign -- "I lost more cases than anyone else?"

1 comment:

janinsanfran said...

In San Francisco we elect the PD. We had a seriously contested election recently, and amazingly, a very experienced, competent veteran of the PD department won. A version of the story here. That said, I agree that it is strange to think that we elect these kind of officials.