Explain the advantages and disadvantages of partisan and non-partisan election methods.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

During the early part of the 20th century, the use of partisan elections came under a great deal of
criticism. Political parties were implicated in corruption scandals, and big-city political machines were
viewed as having too much control over the selection of judges. Rather than making judges independent
from politicians, partisan judicial elections had caused judges to become responsive to the same forces as
those exerted on other elected officials. By the beginning of the 20th century, these concerns led to a shift
away from partisan election of judges. This shift away from partisan judicial elections was generally in
the direction of a nonpartisan election process wherein judges would be selected according to their own
attributes rather than on the basis of their political connections. Currently, more than a dozen states use
non-partisan elections as a means of judicial selection. While non-partisan elections greatly reduce the
influence party politics have on judicial elections, they also remove party identification as a basis for
voters to cast their ballots. Without information related to party identification and with little other
information about a judicial candidate, voters have been found to base their votes on such items as
gender, ethnicity, ballot position, or name recognition. Furthermore, voter participation tends to be lower
in non-partisan elections than in partisan contests. In short, partisan elections provide the public with
more information about the judges and result in higher voter turnout but tend to include a large amount of
party politics. Non-partisan elections reduce the amount of party politics but reduce the amount of
information given to voters resulting in less-educated voting decisions and lower voter turnout.