State lawmakers frequently change judicial election rules with the goal of putting partisan or ideological allies on the bench. With nearly a quarter of the country’s 344 state supreme court justices on the ballot this year, those changes could have big implications in November’s election.
The changes include making nonpartisan elections partisan, altering the composition of judicial nominating commissions, redrawing judicial districts, or creating new courts with jurisdiction over specific cases.
The clearest examples are in North Carolina and Ohio, where legislators recently changed the rules to ensure judicial candidates had party labels next to their names. In 2016, North Carolina Republicans passed a law requiring state supreme court justices to run in partisan elections. At the time of the law’s passage, North Carolina used nonpartisan elections to select its justices, and liberals had just taken a majority on the state’s high court, winning several races with large margins. Since the bill’s passage, state supreme court election results have hewed closely to the state’s overall partisan lean, with Republicans narrowly winning all but one race over three cycles and obtaining a 5–2 majority.
This year, Justice Allison Riggs, appointed to the court last year by Gov. Roy Cooper (D) to fill an interim vacancy, is running as a Democrat in a partisan race against state appellate judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican. Should she lose, Republicans will expand their majority, which has acted swiftly to reverse recent precedent on voting rights, public education, and other significant issues.
