Ohio budget bill: Candidates for top judge seats would have party label on the ballot

Ohio voters would for the first time see a judicial candidate's party affiliation on the November ballot next year under language added to the state budget bill passed by the Senate. 

Ohio is the only state where judges run in partisan primaries but the winners go on to run in nonpartisan general elections. The state budget bill passed by the Senate this month included language requiring party labels for state Supreme Court and appellate court candidates.

The change would take effect for the 2022 election, in which voters will chose a new Supreme Court chief justice. Municipal court, county court and court of common pleas races would remain nonpartisan in the general.

Two additional standalone bills to make the change are moving quickly through the legislature. The bills follow two state Supreme Court elections where Republicans lost three of four seats, moving the court from a 7-0 GOP majority to a 4-3 majority.

Republicans backing the bills say that has nothing to do with it, that the party label provides voters with more information about races that typically receive far fewer votes than those at the top of the ticket.

General elections are already partisan, they say, in that candidates receive party support and appear on party slate cards.

But the change is opposed by the state's legal professional organization: the Ohio Judicial Conference, Ohio State Bar Association and Ohio Courts of Appeals Judges.

Judges are different from other candidates, said 11th District Court of Appeals Judge Cynthia Westcott Rice, and pride themselves on being able to aside their personal views to fairly decide a case.

"Party designations would undermine the goal of electing the most qualified and experienced judges by inviting an under-or uninformed-voter to simply check the box based on an abstraction that does not, under any circumstances, reveal a candidate’s merit," Rice told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee last week.

The House and Senate are now debating the differences between their versions of the massive budget bill in a conference committee. The final budget must be passed and signed by Gov. Mike DeWine before July 1.

If passed, Ohio would join seven other states that have fully partisan judicial elections for supreme and appellate court races.

The Senate voted in April to approve the change in a standalone bill. A separate bill has yet to receive a vote in the House, which is led by a former Ohio Supreme Court justice, Speaker Bob Cupp. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, said the bill has the support of House Republicans and he expects it to pass as early as this week.

Jackie Borchardt is the bureau chief for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.