12 - Nevada and Ohio

Summary

In Nevada and Ohio proposals to adopt the Missouri Plan for some or all of the state’s courts were rejected by the voters on multiple occasions. In neither state does it appear that partisan politics was a major element of the decisions to put to the voters the question of adopting a Missouri Plan system, nor does partisan politics appear to be an element of the voters’ rejection of the proposals. Three times, without success, the Nevada legislature sent proposals for constitutional amendments implementing a Missouri Plan system to the voters (1972, 1988, and 2010). The 2010 proposal came in the wake of an extensive newspaper exposé, tracing the cozy relationships between some Nevada judges and litigants who appeared in their courts. Even with this scandal, voters were unwilling to give up their existing role in judicial selection and retention. In Ohio, an initiative petition put a proposed constitutional amendment on the 1987 ballot that would have adopted the Missouri Plan for appellate judges and would have created a local option for that system for trial judges. Ohioans rejected the amendment by a margin of almost 2 to 1.