As someone from outside America, I find it’s wild that people are elected into what should be purely meritocrical positions such as coroner and judge and sherriff. Up here in Canada, you need to earn those positions through job performance; none of those are elected positions. I mean, why should they be? How could these jobs be possibly improved by utilizing a popularity contest for an evaluation that should be completely skills-based?
They also need no qualifications. You can be any of those straight out of high school, theoretically.
It did happen in the small town where I grew up. Everyone hated the current Justice of the Peace, and an 18-year-old ran and won. He was in his late seventies when I was in high school and seemed like a good judge when I had to see him for a speeding ticket. He is dead now, but I always found it interesting how he just picked a career and did it the whole time. Never lost a race.
That kid is the point I think. You start with a bad judge, some kid gets given a chance, and it turns out the kid is wise and even tempered and manages to be a judge everyone would like to keep.
It's from an era in US politics where there was DEEP suspicion of literally any position being assigned via appointment instead of by a more "accountable to the public" election. Plenty of state judiciary positions are elected as well, and the crowning political achievement of the movement was a constitutional amendment that opened US senate seats to election instead of appointment by state legislature, which is what they had been traditionally.
We should have retained or even amped that suspicion. Look at what SCOTUS has become, just an extension of the major political party's power.
Nah, elected judgeships have been disastrous for the states that implement them. Life term with no reasonable means to punish or remove them whenever they fuck around though, that ought to be corrected and then some.
Yeah, it should be an appointed position. It's silly.
My county changed the sheriff position from elected to appointed by the county council a few years back. A bunch of people flipped out over it but I think it has been great.
As a side note, why do counties tend to have councils running them instead of an executive, who would get the title "Count". We need more Counts in America.
Sheriffs should absolutely not be elected. I've always thought that was bullshit.
I completely disagree with you! Opinions are wild, man!
Sheriff and judge make sense, or you'll just get partisan people who benefit certain entities put into power by politicians. That's why it's wild to me that SCOTUS is appointed and not elected. They're one of the most powerful organizations in the country, who can dramatically change our laws based on their interpretations, and they're all completely partisan now.
Elected judges really isn't all that common in the world. To me (Dutchman), electing judges/sheriffs sounds wild. Police does their own hiring, same goes for the judicial system. Judges decide who gets to be a high court judge, there's no politics involved at all. That to me sounds like a massive violation of the trias politica.
The police do their own hiring here too. But the police chief is usually elected. Same with the sheriff, who manages the county. They're usually an elected position, and then they appoint deputies. So the majority of police officers and sheriff deputies are not elected, but the people running those departments are.
The Republican candidate didn’t have a medical degree? I’d have thought that was a requirement for coroner.
Coroner is mostly a legal and administrative position I think, medical examiners are the ones who actually oversee autopsies.
Nope. Anyone can be a coroner in many jurisdictions. Medical examiners need to be doctors.
What the actual fuck?????
In my country you have to have been a barrister for at least 5 years and in practice it's longer.
I can't get my head around this system of having laypersons voting randoms into a position that requires a high level of skill.
Coroner doesn't really require much skill. It's basically an administrative position. The medical examiner is the one who needs medical experience.
(It still shouldn't be an elected position though.)
Idk, I've had to deal with coronial inquiries and I can't imagine what it would be like if the Coroner was just some random person instead of, well, an actual coroner.
It seems like electing your neighbour the lawnmower guy to run your divorce court instead of letting a judge do it.
What I find most interesting is that coroner is a partisan position. Like, WHY?
Oh I actually know this one. Mostly historical accident and path dependence.
In medieval England, kings wanted to make sure that taxes and fines to the crown were properly paid, so they had their own officials in each county, who reported to the King rather than to any local officials. Sheriffs were responsible for tax collection, law enforcement (both arresting people before they could be tried and carrying out the rulings of the court). But they'd have to wait for the king's courts to actually come to town and hold trials and what not, so in the meantime the king's financial interests weren't necessarily aligned with the sheriff's.
So coroners were appointed to watch over county matters and represent the king's financial interests whenever the courts came to town.
When someone was convicted of a capital offense, their property escheated to the crown. That was an important source of revenue for the crown, so coroners would determine whether a dead body was the result of a crime or not, in order to make sure the crown wasn't missing out on some convict money.
Both the Sheriff and coroner positions survived the transition into American governance, but independence and democratic reforms meant that these previously crown-appointed positions needed to become elected positions. Most states kept Sheriffs and Coroners as county officials, and preserved some of their traditional roles and duties. Many coroners offices were renamed to "medical examiner" but basically still preserved the role of keeping stats on deaths. And without appointment by the crown, most states just chose to make these elected positions.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing. Today I learned something new.
How else are you going to know who to hate?
Both candidates on one item? This might be more than mildly interesting, even if it is only for coroner!
I don't think it was "Interesting as Fuck" interesting though, so I erred on the side of caution.
Please forgive my ignorant Canadian self… Does America still elect coroners? Why are they elected positions? Are people… like… campaigning as wanna be local coroners?
Isn’t that like electing a city accountant or local doctor?
I just heard a bit about this in a commentary on the Lizzie Borden case, which I don't think involved an elected medical examiner, I can't remember that, but they mentioned some places had elected medical exaiminers, that back in the day it could be more of a publicly influential position. Cause of death was way, way more subjective than it is today, and local fortunes and family legacies could be riding on the determination, which was the case in the Lizzie Borden matter.
I recall a case in a small town where the elected coroner was like the mayor's brother and he didn't have any experience. The sheriff was also the mayor's best friend. And let's just say a murder happened and it was incredibly suspicious.
I believe in some locales they do but in my area we don't.
This points out the difference between coroners and medical examiners and seems like states/counties use one or the other https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221913/
Don't keep us in suspense, who won the election?!
The Democrat, based on my Googling. Dude apparently was coroner from the 1940s to the 1990s!
I was Googling also, I don't think that entire term was his. His son, Dr D.M. Ferguson, Jr, took over the coroner role sometime prior to 1968.
Ah, that makes sense. I missed that. Thanks.
If he was in office that long, your local historical society may be interested in that matchbook.
I was thinking they might anyway just because it's a curiosity in terms of the way things are done in American elections. As you can see, it's in poor condition, but I was planning on bringing it over this week, so we're on the same page there.
All of those appear to be for just one candidate. The weird thing in this case is that it's one matchbook for rival candidates.
I wonder if the competition was friendlier than we'd expect to see on a larger scale, and they went halves on all their merch.
I feel like Dr. Ferguson got the better placement. When you open the matchbook, it's his name you'll be looking at. The strike strip is on his side as well.
Except the old trick with these matchbooks was to fold it back and close it over to make those paper matches easy to light, so you're ultimately looking at brown paper, and so that's how Brown Paper won the election that year.
Counterpoint, only one person sees the front of the matchbook, but when you pull out the booklet and strike that match to set the cross on fire, everyone sees the other side. Great placement for a Republican, I think.
That's a good point.
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
