Don’t be fooled by legislators’ latest scheme

Our bumbling legislature, firmly in the stranglehold of radical elements, is trying yet again to fool voters into accepting a constitutional amendment with ulterior motives.

Just as legislators did with “Value Them Both,” which would have taken away reproductive rights while pretending to embrace them, their latest amendment is anything but an attempt to make the state supreme court more responsive to voters.

The description legislators placed on our ballots seems to say it’s all about taking selection of justices out of the hands of lawyers and giving it to voters. Truth is, it’s a blank check allowing the legislature to do whatever it wants with election of supreme court justices.

It also would remove a vitally important constitutional prohibition on justices contributing to or being officers of political parties.

In net, the amendment (published for the next three weeks in the Record’s public notices section) would allow legislators to make our top judges nothing more than political hacks, pushing agendas legislative demagogs want instead of evaluating the law as judges are supposed to.

Kansas’ system of insulating the supreme court from politics came about after a shameful incident, the so-called “triple play” of the 1950s, in which political deals were made to give a lame duck governor a seat on the court in exchange for political favors.

Our system of democracy depends on checks and balances that prevent such dealings. A “yes” vote on the constitutional amendment would eliminate the most important of these and create a radical, autocratic power play that Vladimir Putin would be proud of.

A “no” vote, on the other hand, will allow Kansas to avoid such disgusting incidents as when a billionaire openly tried to buy votes in a supreme court race two years ago in another state.

Contrary to how legislators describe the amendment, a “no” vote would preserve voters’ opportunity to cast ballots on whether to retain or unseat justices, but only after their initial qualifications for office are verified as they are now by an extensive and all-inclusive process that includes plenty of voter input but can’t be tainted by politics.

What’s really going on here is that radical legislators are seeking to overturn voters’ rejection of “Value Them Both” a few years back. They also want to challenge the court’s assertion that the state must provide education for all students, including those who might need special help.

Rather than empowering voters, legislators want to seize power for themselves and reverse rather than enhance the will of voters. Don’t be fooled by their description of their radical amendment as something patriotic. It is far more autocratic. Voting “yes” will turn our courts into a political circus. Voting “no” will let Kansas continue to be a national model for how democracy’s checks and balances ought to work.

— ERIC MEYER