The latest rumor going around the Capital regarding straight ticket voting is that the big three, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker of the House Joe Straus have struck a deal. Apparently this deal will allow straight ticket voting in all partisan races except at the District Judge level. If true, and it seems very likely that it is, this change will fundamentally alter the strategy of county races.
As you probably already know, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s son Ryan was defeated in the Democratic sweep of Harris County last November. In 2009, then Sen. Patrick filed SB 392 eliminating straight ticket voting in judicial elections. In 2013, Sen. Patrick filed SB 103 eliminating straight ticket voting in judicial elections. Although both bills made it out of the State Affairs Committee, neither bill received a vote in the full Senate.
House Speaker Joe Straus had filed a bill in 2009, HB135, that would have eliminated all straight ticket voting, not limited to judicial elections. But that was a couple of months before he became Speaker and the bill never made it out of the Elections committee.
So there has been support of one form or another for eliminating straight ticket voting from both leaders for quite some time. Abbott doesn’t appear to have weighed in on the issue.
The current push for a change seems to have gotten momentum when Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht called for an end to it in his State of the Judiciary address to the State Legislature on February 1st.
I will say only a word about judicial selection, but it is a word of warning. In November, many good judges lost solely because voters in their districts preferred a presidential candidate in the other party. These kinds of partisan sweeps are common, with judicial candidates at the mercy of the top of the ticket. I do not disparage our new judges. I welcome them. My point is only that qualifications did not drive their election; partisan politics did. Such partisan sweeps are demoralizing to judges and disruptive to the legal system. But worse than that, when partisan politics is the driving force, and the political climate is as harsh as ours has become, judicial elections make judges more political, and judicial independence is the casualty.
There is no perfect alternative to judicial elections. But removing judges from straight-ticket voting would help some, and merit selection followed by nonpartisan retention elections would help more.
Speaker Straus immediately agreed and went further, calling for eliminating straight ticket voting altogether:
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus wants to end straight-ticket voting in all elections, he said Wednesday after Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht’s State of the Judiciary address.
“I agree with Chief Justice Hecht that we should end straight-ticket voting in judicial elections, but we shouldn’t stop there,” Straus said in a prepared statement calling for Texas to join the other 40 states that do not allow the practice.
…
Straus said that ending straight-ticket voting would encourage voters to learn about individual candidates’ qualifications and that he looks forward to working with the Legislature on the issue.
“Too often, good men and women are swept out of down-ballot offices due to the political winds at the moment,” he said.
(click here to read the article by Dagney Pruner on DallasNews.com)
Lt. Gov. Patrick agreed with Hecht about the need to eliminate it for the judiciary:
“I have spoken out on this issue many times and have introduced legislation in previous legislative sessions to end straight-ticket voting so that voters evaluate every candidate based on their principles and priorities,” Patrick said through a spokesman. “Straight-ticket voting has a tremendous impact on our judiciary and I was glad Chief Justice Hecht mentioned it in his address today. I look forward to working on this issue this session.”
(click here to read the article by Ross Ramsey on TexasTribune.org)
According to insiders in Austin (yes, I hate those anonymous quotes too but what do you do?), the leaders hit a stumbling block at the appellate and statewide levels. Thus the rumored compromise limiting the changes to the District Judge level.
If this becomes law, it fundamentally changes the strategy for county races, at least for the Harris County Republican Party. For years, the HCRP formed a “joint judicial campaign” wherein the judicial candidates all chipped in and ran as a group. Not only did this help the judicial candidates, it helped all Republican candidates. After all, when a voter hears “vote Republican” a thousand times during a campaign, it doesn’t limit that vote to judicial candidates.
Obviously there would be no more “joint judicial campaigns”, at least not in the form we have seen previously. I suppose the candidates could still pool their money and tell people that Republican judges are the greatest but would that be effective for the judges? Will people vote straight ticket and think their vote counts for the judicial positions? Most likely, candidates will have to come up with other strategies and maybe even try to run on their own merit and funding. If so, will this lead to the election of the wealthiest judges, not the most meritorious? It will be interesting.
What will the HCRP do with a significantly reduced amount of money available under one umbrella? How will it affect local officeholders, many of whom have been able to come up through the grassroots without having to raise significant amounts of money because they were able to piggyback on the judicial campaign? Will we go back to the old days of money being the primary influence?
And why exclude the appellate and statewide judicial candidates?
There are a lot of things to think about and a lot of questions to be answered before making a change to the straight ticket voting system. Gromer Jeffers, Jr. has some thoughts on the issue:
Are there unintended victims of straight-ticket voting?
Judicial candidates often complain that campaigning as a candidate in the minority party is fruitless because it’s hard to overcome the wave of votes from people who are voting based on party affiliation.
Last week Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said the state should end straight-ticket voting in judicial elections, which prompted Straus to call for a complete ban.
The reality is judicial candidates are obscure to voters. Contenders in the political party out of power don’t have much of a chance. But that wouldn’t suddenly change if voters were forced to make specific choices in every partisan race.
That’s because polls show over and over again that the main motivator for American voters is party identification. There are few truly independent voters left in this country; most identify with one polarized party or another.
Hecht’s desire to have judicial elections free of straight-ticket voting misses the larger point: Judicial candidates should run in separate nonpartisan elections. That would force voters to examine those candidates from a different lens and shorten the ballot in other election years.
(click here to read the article by Gromer Jeffers, Jr. on DallasNews.com)
I hope that our legislators think about this issue long and hard before changing it.
Don’t put a pro-abortion weasel at the top of the county ticket and you won’t have so many repub voters either stay home or stray. Not hard.
I’m with Joe Straus. Straight ticket voting should be eliminated altogether.
Furthermore, judges should not run for office under a party label. Neither should the District Attorney, the Sheriff, or the Constable. When running for office, these candidates can ID themselves as Republicans, Democrats, or whatever, and they are free to inform the voters on their pro-life, pro-choice, or whatever positions. Party labels should be reserved only for legislative offices- city council, county commissioners, state representatives and senators, and U.S. congressional candidates, as well as state executive offices – governor, lt. governor, etc. The attorney general, like the district attorneys, should be a non partisan position. .
And what about those jungle ballots? With a 100 or so candidates on a ballot, voters are unlikely to make intelligent choices and more likely to engage in straight ticket voting.
Our “Leaders” want to take away str8 party voting because their Party’s butts got kicked in the biggest county because THEIR voters did split-ticket voting:
1. Because THEIR Presidential candidate was a repulsive slug and Russian agent.
2. The opposition Party actually had better, smarter, more likable and better looking judicial candidates who campaigned really well.
The truth, the horrible truth, is that the Harris County Democratic judicial candidates who won were actually better candidates whom the people wanted to be in office. The Harris County judicial system had been stodgy, scary, and unfair. That is why the voters replaced it.
That is what elections are for.
I prefer str8-ticket voting because I am a Congressional candidate and, if elected, I would like to serve with other Democrats because I feel that we would have a better spirit of cooperation. However if our “Leaders” succeed with either the Abbott plan or the Strauss plan, their unintended consequence will be the retention of the very capable Harris County Democratic judicial slate from 2016, the exact opposite of what they want..
Totally agree with number 1.
“better, smarter, more likable, and better looking.’ Are you for real, Pat?? I’d be surprised if 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of voters knew what judicial candidates on either side of the aisle looked like, much less could differentiate them on any of the only slightly more substantive attributes you outline. The reality is, outside of W. Gray, the Fiesta, and Baytown, Democrat judicial candidates barely even campaigned. The 2016 Harris County results were completely driven by the top of the ticket and had literally nothing to do with the merits of individual judicial candidate from either party.
Emmett, you sure got that right. And that’s a good reason why straight ticket voting should be eliminated.
A Congressional candidate? I know of two votes Mr. Bryan will get – his own and that of Neither Here Nor There. Anyone who calls the President of the United States a “repulsive slug” – be the president a Republican or Democrat – should never be elected to any office.
Why do we even have voting for judges in this state? It’s nonsensical to pretend 97{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of voters have any clue as how to evaluate the merits of one judge vs. another.
If we select judges this way, we might as well select the physicists and rocket scientists at NASA by a popular vote. It is the case they’re “feeding at the (government) trough.” (sarcasm)
One of the more disconcerting discussions on the subject I had recently was a family friend who’s a partner at a pretty big TX law firm. When meeting a new client (typically medium sized businesses), the first question from said potential client is, “how much money has your firm donated to Judge ( X ) and how much to Judge ( Y )? “
We’ve had partisan wipeouts of judges ever since Bill Clements was elected governor and started appointing Republican judges. In 1982, a bunch of good Republican incumbents got wiped out because Mark White carried the county. One winning Democrat on election day was facing criminal charges for having a sexual encounter with a female client in the Harris County Jail. He beat an outstanding court of appeals justice. A fine district judge was beat by a Dem whose highest and best use was making poodles out of balloons in the coffee shop of the criminal courthouse.
The same thing has happened to Democrats. Good judges beaten by bad Republicans.
Sometimes, the citizens can’t lose when there’s a great Democrat and a great Republican running against each other. I can think of a couple of those races.
At one time, there was an unspoken agreement between the two parties that good judges, Democrat or Republican, didn’t draw opponents but that has long since broken down. Now every judge gets an opponent every election.
What makes it even more frustrating to those of use who work in the courthouse is that Democrats do well in presidential years while Republicans do well in gubernatorial years. So, half of the judges are in good shape every election and it’s always the same half due to four-year terms.
Last year, we lost some good Republican judges and gained some Democrats who have potential.
We’ve got to do better. I don’t know the right answer but taking judges off the straight ticket lever is a start. We’ve got 60 district judges in Harris County. No one knows all of them and no one can intelligently vote in all of the races.
I disagree with Howie Katz that the district attorney should be a non-partisan race. The DA is a policy making position. He/she decides what priorities there should be for prosecutions and sets policies on what to do with individual cases. For example, Johnny Holmes banned probation recommendations in burglary cases after a friend’s home was burgalarized. That was well within his authority. Kim Ogg’s new policy on marijuana cases is another legitimate exercise in prosecutorial discretion. It may work or she may have to change/modify it in the future but it is a policy she was entitled to adopt.