Question of Week: Should our Judges be retained?

A Court Room

Last week, you overwhelmingly voted that you don’t believe that the jobs plans presented by Terry Branstad and Chet Culver will work.  28 residents (80%) voted no, 7 residents (20%) voted I don’t know, and 0 residents voted yes. The question of the week poll is unscientific and does not reflect the view of Osky News.

This week we will examine judicial retention. Since August, we have been hearing from a campaign called Iowa for Freedom, an organization determined to unseat the three Iowa Supreme Court Justices facing retention this year. Iowa for Freedom is targeting specifically Chief Justice Ternus, Justice Streit, and Justice Ternus. The groups main reason for leading this effort stems from last year’s unanimous ruling overturning Iowa’s gay marriage law.

Activists of this move say that it is a good thing to do this. They say that it is time for judges to stop legislating from the bench before our rights are “in danger of being usurped by activist judges who are unelected officials”. Critics of this organizations move say that we are putting the future of our courts in jeopardy. They warn that by making judicial retention a large campaign, we are sidestepping our state constitution and bringing partisonship to a branch of government meant to be fair and impartial.

Now its your turn to vote. Vote in our online poll. The polls will be open until next Sunday when we will close the poll and release the final vote count. Also as a reminder, our second and final election opinion poll will be entering its final week. These polls are utilized by the campaigns to see where the public stands on their campaign and to the local campaigns, this is there only poll. If you have any questions, please e-mail us at info@oskynews.org.