Litigation

Operator, Wrong Number

By Charlie Hall

Earlier this month, the American Justice Partnership?which has spent more than $2 million this decade on Supreme Court races?alleged a national conspiracy to ?abolish judicial elections.?  (AJP regularly inveighs against the merit selection/retention election systems that 24 states have used for decades to select judges.)

Of course, the ?abolish elections? slogan is a fiction, since these judges do stand for reelection. But the report, which contains numerous errors, relies on lavish number-doctoring to create a charge that one foundation, the Open Society Institute ?has spent at least $45.4 million to promote the so-called merit selection system and reduce the influence of citizens and their elected representatives when it comes to picking judges.?

The number is bogus.   AJP?s report lumps together 54 groups that received funding for any projects involving the justice system.  How many of them actually seek to promote retention elections over contested elections?

Answer: Only four, with support totaling about $2.6 million.  That?s barely 5 percent of the total claimed by AJP.   In fact 15 of the groups don?t even work on state judicial issues, focusing exclusively on federal courts.  The rest, like Justice at Stake, don?t take a position favoring merit selection and retention elections over other systems. (To see JAS’s position on judicial elections and other campaign reforms, such as public financing of competitive elections, click here.)

It?s no surprise when campaign operatives season the truth with their spin.  But cooking up facts has moved this blog bluster into a different category: home of the whopper.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).