KANSAS — Kansans will vote on a constitutional amendment on Aug. 4 that would change the method for appointing state supreme court justices. The measure would replace the system of assisted appointment with direct partisan elections and would abolish the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission.

The amendment will appear on the ballot concurrent with statewide primaries. If the measure passes, Kansas will be the first state to alter its supreme court selection method since Ohio in 2021. Ohio's change modified its process from partisan primaries with nonpartisan general elections to partisan primaries with partisan general elections.

The Kansas Legislature placed the measure on the ballot by passing Senate Concurrent Resolution 1611. The Kansas Senate approved the resolution on March 6 by a vote of 27-13. Twenty-seven Republican senators voted in favor of the amendment, while four Republicans and nine Democrats voted in opposition.

The Kansas House of Representatives approved the amendment on March 19 by a vote of 84-40. Eighty-four Republican representatives and zero Democrats voted in favor of the amendment, and four Republicans and 36 Democrats voted against the measure in the House.

State Senate President Ty Masterson said, "Critics of elections warn of politics but every system is political. Direct elections make the political dynamic explicit, not hidden in backrooms by bar members who think they're better than the rest of us."

Micah Kubic, ACLU of Kansas director, said, "This is a blatant attack by the legislators on our justices, and it's part of a decades-long pattern of politicians attempting to punish the judicial branch for issuing decisions on education and reproductive freedom that they disagree with."

The ballot measure would authorize the direct partisan election of justices and authorize the Kansas Legislature to develop rules for judicial elections. Currently, after their initial appointment, justices undergo a retention election where voters decide whether to retain them. Since 1990, no justice has lost a retention election or received less than 52% of the vote in favor of retention. The average affirmative vote for retention in Kansas supreme court elections is 68.14%. Kansas is the only state in which the state Bar Association appoints a majority of the members of the judicial nominating commission. Twenty-one states use an assisted appointment method for selecting state supreme court justices, and of the 21 states that directly elect state supreme court justices, 13 hold nonpartisan elections.