You should watch Kansas Supreme Court nomination process on YouTube | Opinion
The backers of a constitutional amendment to get rid of merit selection of Kansas Supreme Court justices prattle a lot about bringing “transparency” to the process.
Fortunately, you have the opportunity to watch merit selection happen and judge for yourself whether it’s transparent or not.
Your next opportunity to do that will come at 11 a.m. on Thursday, when the Supreme Court Nominating Commission will meet to narrow down the applicants for the seat of Marla Luckert, who will retire from the court as of March 28.
The commission will interview all the candidates who have applied for the position — in public.
After the interviews, commission members can deliberate behind closed doors as necessary to protect the privacy of the applicants (a common practice in hiring at all levels of government).
Following that, the commission will vote to narrow the list to three finalists, which also must be done in public.
The three names will be forwarded to the governor, who makes the final choice.
The entire proceeding will be livestreamed, and you can watch it at www.youtube.com/@KansasJudicialBranch.
These sessions have always been open to the public, and they’ve been posted on YouTube for the last five years.
It’s about as transparent as anything Kansas state government ever does.
And it’s a lot more transparent than practically anything done by the legislators who criticize the merit system, and want you to get rid of it in favor of direct election, with all the shady politics that involves.
While we’re on the subject of transparency, just a reminder that the amendment — especially the ballot explanation you’ll see in the voting booth on Aug. 4 — is an act of legislative deception in and of itself.
The amendment contains a hidden provision repealing longstanding prohibitions on Supreme Court justices being active in partisan politics. Those prohibitions are simple common sense — do we really want justices deciding cases based on which political donors or pressure groups their decisions would hurt or help?
If the amendment passes, justices would be allowed to raise campaign money for themselves and candidates for other offices. They could even serve as officers of their political party.
It’s practically a step-by-step recipe for corruption of the courts in favor of the moneyed elite. No wonder the Legislature left that out of the ballot description.
But after doing that, they got a heck of a nerve trying to lecture anybody on governmental transparency.
So if you’re on the fence on the judicial selection amendment, here’s my advice:
Tune in to the livestream of the Supreme Court Nominating Committee and watch the selection process happen.
Then watch a livestream of the Legislature on any issue you’d care to choose.
Decide who you find more trustworthy and vote accordingly.
