RALEIGH — North Carolina Republican lawmakers pressed ahead Tuesday to make all judicial elections officially partisan again, two months after the General Assembly passed a law doing the same for the appellate court bench.
A House elections committee voted along party lines to revert races for the local Superior Court and District Court judgeships to partisan affairs starting in 2018. The bill’s next stop is the House floor.
In a surprise special session in December, the previous edition of the GOP-controlled legislature approved partisan races for the Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court in 2018.
For decades, trial and appellate court judgeship elections were partisan, with candidates running in party primaries and identified by the party in which they were nominated. But that slowly changed over several years starting in 1996, first with the shift to nonpartisan races for Superior Court, followed by District Court elections in 2001 and then to the Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court with the 2004 elections.
In nonpartisan races, primaries are held when there are at least three candidates. The top two vote-getters advance to the general election. Their partisan affiliations by voter registration aren’t listed on the ballot.
While Democrats sought non-partisan races as Republicans increasingly won judicial elections, supporters at the time also said non-partisan races would help distance the judicial branch from politics and keep political ideology out of decision-making on the bench.
But GOP lawmakers argued Tuesday that voters want easy access to partisan labels because they have little information otherwise about the candidates.
Bill sponsor Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, said previous Democratic efforts to “hide” the political affiliation have “caused confusion and allowed judicial candidates to win really for no reason other than their placement on the ballot or a catchy name.”
“We will provide the voters with critical information that can assist them with selection of the candidate that they, the voter, feel is best for the job,” Burr said.
The shift back to partisan races for the appellate courts came barely a month after Mike Morgan defeated incumbent Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds in November. While the race had been officially nonpartisan, Morgan’s victory meant justices with Democratic voter registration held a majority on the court for the first time in nearly 20 years.
Some Democrats in Tuesday’s committee meeting agreed with Republicans that voters lack the information needed to make a good decision on a judicial candidate. But knowing about a candidate’s legal experience and education is more important than party labels, said Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake.
“If the only information you’re giving votes is partisan affiliation you are creating a system that will almost guarantee you that you get more judicial activists,” Martin said.
House Minority Leader Darren Jackson, D-Wake, warned GOP members that it may not lead to more Republican local court victories. He said several current Republican judges in Wake County are likely to lose in future elections because they will be labeled a GOP nominee in the Democratic-dominated county.
The North Carolina Bar Association, a non-governmental group representing state attorneys, is opposed to the bill because the association opposes the election of judges, association lobbyist Kim Crouch told the committee. The association prefers a process whereby judges are appointed or selected through a merit-based process.