More At Stake

We all know that voting is important, or at least we should all know that voting is important. This August, it may just be more important than we know. On the ballot there will be 23 questions regarding retention of members of the judiciary. Generally these are considered to be general housekeeping questions because these Judges are not running against anyone other than themselves. Or rather, in the past they have not been running against anyone other than themselves. The questions are simply do you want to retain each Judge. It is deceptively simple. Actually, the situation is fairly complex. Three Tennessee Supreme Court Justices are up for retention (which happens on 8 year cycles). All three have been reviewed by a heavily right slanted Judicial Review Commission and all three scored exceptionally well. All were deemed to be worthy of retention by this Commission.

However, that doesn’t matter to some members of the legislature that are taking a run at unbalancing the Tennessee Supreme Court. Regardless of your personal political convictions, most thinking individuals would agree that the Tennessee’s High Court is no place for politics. The law is neither red nor blue. It is neutral, or at least it should be. The move to replace this Court with one that is more aligned with conservative views is appalling. First, this Court is not liberal. In 21 capitol cases they upheld 20 and upheld the death penalty in 18-those are not the numbers of a liberal court. What they are not is right leaning and that is what some in our legislature are looking for. Why? Oh, there are several reasons but the most pressing and frightening are the drive to change the Attorney General (who is appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court) to a more right leaning appointment and some questionable legislation that could seriously impact Tennessee voter’s rights and would most likely not find favor in anything but the most right winged courtroom.

So, there is a movement to unseat these three Tennessee Supreme Court Justices. Tennesseans need to be aware and they need to vote. This is not an issue that should be decided with a combination of apathy and political greed. If you are looking for a little light reading check out Senate Bill 0471 on the Tennessee General Assembly website. This bill is one of the things that keep me up at night and it is one of the reasons that voting in the August election, and keeping a balanced Tennessee Supreme Court is absolutely necessary. I know that slogging through 23 questions regarding the retention of judges that you don’t even know is time consuming and given that it does not appear to have the personal impact of a local election, it is a big request. But, that is what those that want control of the High Court in Tennessee are counting on-apathy is a good as a vote to dismiss. Basically, no vote is a NO vote. I know that Jefferson County and Tennessee are seriously red but I have more faith in the citizens of our County and State than to believe that we will follow a faction of the party down the political rabbit hole. This is not a red vs. blue issue. This is a Tennessee issue. It is time to remind some members of our Supermajority that there are still boundaries for the red party in a red state. Otherwise we run the real risk of the Supermajority becoming a dictatorship.