Sunday, October 31, 2010

Judicial retention

Backing the Judges: I think it's safe to say the groups trying to make sure Iowa Supreme Court justices don't get swept out of office Tuesday read the Des Moines Register Sunday. The new Iowa Poll shows more Iowans likely to vote want to vote out the judges than want to keep them in....37% to 34%. Sure, it's close. But, let's be honest, the judicial retention idea is not exactly what typically brings in the crowds to the polls. And if you have more interest in the topic, you are probably a lot more likely to flip over the ballot and cast your vote.

Sunday, Fair Courts for Us held a 4pm telephone conference call featuring two former Iowa governors: Republican Bob Ray and Democrat Tom Vilsack. Vilsack wouldn't say he was worried the judges were going down. He did agree with Ray that he is concerned Iowans don't fully realize what their vote is about on Tuesday. The concern is that Iowans ticked off that same-sex marriage is now legal want to take down the judges to turn things back to the way they used to be when same-sex couples couldn't legal marry in Iowa. That won't happen, of course, with this retention vote. But the govs aren't so sure people realize that. This whole issue is fascinating to me. It's always the unexpected issues that intrigue me the most.

Here's what the govs had to say:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought Vilsack was eloquent in describing how, in cases he lost before the Court, he never thought that the Justices had done anything less than their duty to apply the law. I wish this conference call would get wider play, and I wish it had happened much earlier in the election season.

Anonymous said...

Good ole Bob likes to lead some Iowans to believe that not giving them retention will somehow lead to a different ruling... it disappoints me to see how so many don't understand Iowa government process works.

I agree with the statement above. This all should have happened much earlier. Right when that lame excuse of a person decided to make this issue political.