Through the years, The FAMiLY LEADER has fielded thousands of requests from friends, wondering how to vote in Iowa’s unusual judicial retention races. How DO you know whether to retain the various judges up and down the ballot?
The good news is, there are no Iowa Supreme Court judges on the ballot this November. In the future, however, The FAMiLY LEADER will provide information about the current justices, due in part to some notorious opinions they have rendered in recent years, including their “finding” an absolute, fundamental “right” to abortion in our Iowa Constitution using “evolving standards.”
For the lower court judges who ARE on the ballot, the bad news is we do not have adequate information. When we have asked judges in the past for their judicial philosophy via questionnaires (spending over 100 hours of staff time and thousands of dollars), they have almost unanimously refused to answer. Our efforts – which were ignored by Iowa’s judges themselves – have proved too costly to continue in good conscience.
What’s more, the current selection process for judges in Iowa (via “nominating commissions,” stacked with [mostly] leftist attorneys) makes it difficult for voters to have input or to get adequate information on who to retain or not retain. We encourage you to learn what you can of the judges and use your best discernment, but the deck is stacked against us all.
Thus, The FAMiLY LEADER has supported, and will continue to support, reforms to our judge selection process. Iowa can and must do better. We urge you to join us in those efforts at the Legislature next January!
