The following articlewas originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Ohio is one of seven states that elects state supreme court justices based on partisan elections — which can impact voters and campaign finance dollars. This is a new change, with Ohio Republican lawmakers adding party labels to the races starting in 2022.
However, partisan elections are “a difficult fit for judges,” said Michael Milov-Cordoba, counsel for The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“Legislators are changing the types of elections … to obtain a political advantage one way or another,” he said. “State courts are all deciding more significant national issues than they were in the past.”
Nonpartisan elections are used in 14 states for state supreme court races and another 14 use what’s called “merit selection,” a sort of job application process where candidates apply for a vacancy in the judicial …