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One of the motivations for changing judicial selection in Mississippi was court modernization. In the 1970s, Mississippi's judicial systems ranked last on an index of legal professionalism. However, a second motivation was more political: it came in response to demands, and lawsuits, from the African American community to revise the judicial districts from which trial judges were elected in order to increase the number of African American judges. There was also a touch of partisanship involved because not long before the legislature voted to switch to nonpartisan judicial elections, a small number of incumbent judges running for reelection switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The legislature adopted nonpartisan judicial elections in 1994 on votes that did not evidence significant partisanship.
Georgia switched to nonpartisan judicial elections in 1983. The change did not reflect an effort by Democrats to protect Democratic judges from increasing Republican strength. Instead the change was part of a general overhaul of the state constitution, including modernizing the court system. The committee charged with redrafting the judicial article of the constitution briefly considered, but then dismissed, the idea of adopting some form of the Missouri Plan. There was a minor indication of partisanship in one vote on the change when a Democrat offered an amendment to delete the phrase “on a nonpartisan basis,” which would have left the choice of partisan or nonpartisan elections as a matter of ordinary legislation; a slight majority of Democrats voted in favor of the deletion, but almost all of the small number of Republicans in the House voted against the deletion. The revised constitution, including the changes to judicial elections, was overwhelmingly approved by the voters in 1983.
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