What explains county patterns in Kansas Supreme Court judicial retention elections in recent years?
Why did the pattern change from 2010 to 2016 to 2022?
Last month six of seven Kansas Supreme Court justices faced voters in judicial retention elections and were overwhelmingly retained in office. However, results by county in 2022 were very different from what was observed in 2016, but more similar to 2010.
This year Justice Caleb Stegall received nearly 73% “yes” votes to be retained, while justices Dan Biles, Marla Luckert, Melissa Standridge, K.J. Wall, and Evelyn Wilson received around 66% “yes” votes. Justice Eric Rosen faced voters in 2020 and will again in 2026.
Retention elections
Kansas Supreme Court justices face retention elections every six years according to the Kansas Judicial Branch page.
After a justice's first full year in office, he or she must stand for a retention vote in the next general election to remain on the court. If a majority of votes are cast to retain the justice, he or she remains in office for a term of six years. Justices are subject to a similar retention vote every six years.
County Analysis
Note: County analysis for all years uses unofficial results reported online in the days after an election by the Kansas Secretary of State. It’s unclear why the Secretary of State for many years reports election day results in one format with maps, and the final results in a different format without maps. It’s unclear why the unofficial results have never shown county maps for judicial retention contests. It’s unclear why all judicial contests are not part of the unofficial results.
While Kansas voters retained Supreme Court justices statewide by healthy margins, analysis by county tells a different story.
Justices Dan Biles and Marla Luckert have been part of three retention elections, which show very different results by county across 2010, 2016 and 2022.
In 2016 a majority of the 105 Kansas counties voted not to retain Justice Biles and not to retain Justice Luckert, but these justices still won statewide with about 55% of the vote.
What explains changes in county patterns across 2010, 2016 and 2022 for these two justices? What’s changed since 2016?
Justice Stegall faced retention elections only in 2016 and 2022, but a map of the counties he lost is not needed since it is blank. Justice Stegall won all 105 counties in both 2016 and 2022 with large margins (71% and 73%).
Justices Standridge, Wall and Wilson faced their first retention election in 2022 after assuming office in 2020, but voters in several counties voted not to retain them.
What explains these counties voting not to retain?
Cheyenne (CN), Wallace (WA) and Wichita (WH) counties voted not to retain any of these three new justices.
Washington (WS) and Nemaha (NM) counties also voted not to retain Justices Wall and Wilson.
Linn (LN) County also voted note to retain Justice Wall.
Analysis (2004-2022)
Bar Plot
From the available data, the highest approval of Kansas Supreme Court justices was in 2004 when all justices received more than 75% approval.
Summary of Bar Plot
Data Used in Bar Plot
Data is from Election Results provided by the Kansas Secretary of State.
Related
Kansas Supreme Court, Ballotpedia.
Kansas Law School Silent After Diversity Committee Demonizes Christian Law Firm, Spurring Top State Judge to Resign, Tyler O’Neil, The Daily Signal, 2022-12-05.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius-era comments
Sebelius continues packing Kansas Supreme Court with Democrats: 5 Democrats Vs. 2 Republicans when Kansas has only 27% Democrats!, Kansas Meadowlark (via WayBack Machine), 2005-07-22.
Political Profile of Members of the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission: 6 Democrats, 2 Republicans, 1 Republican for Moore, Kansas Meadowlark (via Wayback Machine), 2006-07-03.
I don't know if ballotopedia is biased, but it says that voters were pretty PO'd by the court overturning the death sentences of the Carr brothers. As I mentioned, I wasn't too astute a voter at the time. I did vote, but wrote in someone for president because I wasn't a fan of Trump and knew my vote wouldn't really matter in Kansas - I think I wrote in Harry Truman. Don't remember the part about Kansas supreme court retentions.
I haven't been very active politically until recently. I didn't even realize the KS supreme court justices were up for retention until I saw a bit about it recently from a mainstream (ie lefty source), saying the justices were all fair, blah blah blah. So I looked into it, and voted to retain ONLY Stegall based on him NOT finding a "right" to abortion in the constitution. Looks like there were about 7% of us that did that.