Kansans elected their Supreme Court justices for nearly a century, from statehood in 1861 until 1958. On August 4, voters will decide whether to restore that right.
The question on the primary ballot is straightforward. A yes vote gives Kansas citizens the right to elect the seven justices of the Kansas Supreme Court in staggered elections, with six-year terms unchanged. A no vote keeps the current system, in which a nine-member nominating commission screens applicants behind closed doors and sends three names to the governor.
Here is how that commission is built. Five of its nine members are lawyers, selected only by other lawyers who are members of the Kansas bar. The remaining four are appointed by the governor.
No other state in the country selects its highest court this way. Kansas stands alone in giving one profession a permanent majority over who can even be considered for the Supreme Court.
The people of Kansas never see the commission’s deliberations, never vote on its members, and never get a say in who reaches the governor’s desk. The only voice voters have is a retention election, an up-or-down vote in which a sitting justice faces no opponent. Since the system was adopted in 1958, no Kansas Supreme Court justice has ever lost one.
Supporters of the status quo argue the commission keeps politics out of the courts. The record does not support that claim. The commission’s votes are secret. Its lawyer majority answers to no voter.
Politics has not been removed from the process; it has simply been moved out of public view, where roughly 12,000 bar members hold more influence over the state’s highest court than 2 million registered voters.
The amendment returns that influence to where the Kansas Constitution places all political power: the people. Justices would be elected statewide, on staggered ballots beginning in 2028, so no single election decides the entire court. Candidates would campaign in public, answer questions in public, and be subject to the same disclosure rules as every other candidate for statewide office.
Voters could weigh qualifications, records, and judicial philosophy for themselves.
This is not an experiment. Twenty-one states already elect their supreme court justices, and Kansas did so for its first hundred years. The 1958 change followed a political scandal involving a governor who resigned to secure his own appointment to the bench. The answer to one governor’s abuse was to remove the voters from the process entirely. Sixty-eight years later, Kansans can correct that overreaction. The Legislature has already spoken. Senate Concurrent Resolution 1611 passed the Senate 27-13 and the House 84-40, clearing the two-thirds threshold required to place a constitutional amendment before voters. Polling shows why: 74% of Kansans support electing Supreme Court justices, while 20% prefer the current attorney-controlled system. Support for a public voice in judicial selection crosses party lines, regions, and generations.
Opponents warn that elections would bring money and campaigning into judicial selection. Money and influence are already present in the current system; they are simply concentrated in a small, unelected group and exercised without disclosure. Elections replace private influence with public accountability. Campaign finance rules, disclosure requirements, and the judgment of voters apply to elected justices. None of those safeguards applies to the commission today.
The Kansas Supreme Court decides cases that touch every family in the state: taxes, schools, property, public safety, and the meaning of the state constitution itself. A body with that much power should answer to the people it governs. Every legislator, every statewide official, and every county officer in Kansas stands before the voters. The justices of the Supreme Court should as well.
The vote is August 4. Kansans who believe the court belongs to the people of Kansas, and to no profession or commission, should vote yes on the judicial reform amendment.
Chris McGowne is a private practice attorney from Hays, who is also General Counsel of the Kansas Republican Party and Chair of the Big First Republican Party.
