Vote for common sense

Take back the bench! It’s a battle cry heard with increasing frequency these days. But despite seeming to be a good message, applicable to such things as an upcoming vote involving St. Luke Hospital, it’s about as deceptive as anything else that floats ominously down the rivers of cash secretively provided by ultra-radical Koch Industries billionaires.

Commercials contend that Kansas Supreme Court justices don’t face election. That’s simply not true. Each justice — like every judge in the state — is subject to regular ballot questions asking whether the public wants him or her to be retained or fired. A few months back, an earlier torrent of Koch money tried to wash away a bunch of justices, but voters weren’t fooled and chose to retain them.

Now, Koch money is trying again, this time attempting to do away with decades of highly touted reform and make justices run like everyday politicians in regular primary and general elections. This isn’t about restoring control to common citizens. It’s about making sure small bands of die-hard radicals who tend to control primaries can block anyone they don’t like.

In this case, what the commercial buyers don’t like is simple. The vote is entirely about trying yet again to take away women’s rights to consider abortion. People of the state already settled this issue in voting against the misnamed “Value Them Both” constitutional amendment. Now radicals want a second bite at the apple, and the only way they can turn defeat into victory is if they transform the state’s revered judges into everyday partisan politicians.

If you like what politics has done to Congress and the Legislature, you’ll love what it might do to the Supreme Court. Instead of studiously weighing the law, justices would follow whatever radical doctrine might be put forward by primary voters and big-money contributors like the Kochs. Otherwise, they would never get past primary elections.

This is hardly the same situation as the one involving St. Luke. Overseeing St. Luke is a board that imposes close to double the amount of property taxes as any other special board in the county. Yet, unlike the other boards, its members don’t face election in regular balloting. If you want to vote, you have to show up in person, precisely at 5 p.m. some specific May evening.

We get to vote for drainage board members, extension board members, township board members, and a whole host of other officials at the same time as we vote for governor, county commissioner, and other officials. Why choose hospital directors any differently?

So few regular citizens show up to vote in the current system that voting often is controlled by incumbent directors and hospital employees ending their workday by selecting who will hire their bosses’ bosses. You might be tempted to compare this tax-levying board to some social club, but many clubs nowadays don’t require in-person voting at specific, inconvenient times.

Mark your calendars: 5 p.m. May 26 in the basement of St. Luke Clinic is when you’ll be able to vote to start the process of requiring regular rather than club elections for hospital directors. July 28 to Aug. 4 at multiple locations is when you can tell the big money people that you don’t want to politicize the Supreme Court. Commercials about the vote need a new slogan: Justice doesn’t go better with Koch.

— Eric Meyer