Anybody else just sick of the ads in this Supreme Court race? Brad Schimel is corrupt! Susan Crawford is a radical! And Elon Musk will pay $100 for your vote with a chance to win up to a million!
This campaign insults the intelligence of voters. The Supreme Court rarely decides a case involving violent criminals. And yet, they want us to believe that if one or the other candidate is elected they’ll release every pedophile and serial killer in Wisconsin prisons and order them to take up residence in our attics. Over $100 million will be spent on garbage like this.
Meanwhile, the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction has been lost in the shadows almost completely. The office itself is fairly weak, but education is in a very bad place in our state and so we really deserved a more high-profile discussion between two candidates with vastly different views. I like Brittany Kinser, but I would have appreciated an opportunity to see her exchange ideas with the incumbent.
What were once low-key, truly nonpartisan elections have become stand-ins for the vicious tribal warfare between Big Blue and Big Red. This just doesn’t work anymore. Let’s change how we select both our Supreme Court and the leader of public education.
There are any number of ways to select justices. A model I like is to have the governor nominate someone off of a list provided by the State Bar Association. The criteria would be a distinguished legal background and a well-documented reputation for fairness. Past partisan political activity should be all but disqualifying. Judges gain reputations among lawyers. It shouldn’t be hard for the Bar to come up with a list of candidates that meet these criteria.
Then the governor would pick a candidate off that list and send it on to the Senate for confirmation. Now, I know, it’s not like this process hasn’t become ugly at the Federal level. But it’s not nearly as awful as these months of character assassination and flat out lies polluting our airwaves. It won’t be great, but it should be better.
The new justice would serve for a single ten-year term. That means they wouldn’t need to care about catering to anybody.
As for Superintendent, let’s just abolish that office and DPI altogether and replace it with a Department of Education led by a cabinet level gubernatorial appointment, also subject to Senate confirmation, as all of them are. Wisconsin is the only state that elects its education leader and where that leader isn’t answerable to a board of education. And DPI’s “independence” has only resulted in it being a weak outpost within state government. Pulling education into the cabinet will actually give it more firepower.
If the idea was that education was so important that it needed to be insulated from politics, well, that was quaint. Jill Underly is supported by the Democratic Party and WEAC. Her challenger is supported by the Republicans and affiliated interest groups. So much for being above politics.
Nobody is well-served by the system we have now. It degrades both the candidates and the offices they seek. There is a better way.
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Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
What we are seeing does not insult the intelligence of the voters, rather it reflects the intelligence of the voters. Or maybe I should say it reflects how much intelligence factors in to how people vote. It really is a lizard brain process and so we get the ads that speak to that.
Your idea is a good start. I’d like to think that something like community notes on X could be used to whittle down the candidates.
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