BY: SHERMAN SMITH
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas voters will decide next year whether to rewrite the state’s constitution to turn the Kansas Supreme Court into an elected office.
The House on Wednesday narrowly endorsed a Senate resolution to place the question on the August 2026 ballot, rejecting concerns that the change from a merit-based selection system for justices would result in a more politicized court.
Republicans have pursued the change for years in response to rulings that require lawmakers to fully fund public schools and that established a right to terminate a pregnancy. But they defend the change as a way to empower voters.
“They think the voters should have a bigger role in the selection process,” said Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, D-Overland Park, during debate Wednesday. “To that, I find it ironic that we have chosen to place this constitutional amendment on the ballot of a low-turnout election. And I think that’s because that’s not what this is really about. This is about injecting politics into our court system.”
Vaughn said the inevitable surge in campaign spending for the high court would “invite misinformation” and that “justice should not be for sale.”
Rep. Susan Humphries, R-Wichita, responded: “We all know elections are not for sale,” which was met with a smattering of laughter from her colleagues.
The highest bidder, she pointed out, doesn’t win every race. Campaign finance matters, she conceded, but is “vastly overstated” because voters can evaluate the merit of candidates.
And she pointed out that most Kansans, if asked, don’t know how justices currently are selected.
The House declared an emergency to take final action on Senate Concurrent Resolution 1611 without waiting the customary day between the debate and a vote. The House then approved the resolution by an 84-40 margin, meeting the minimum two-thirds threshold needed for passage. The Senate passed the resolution 27-13 on March 6.
In the House, four Republicans joined Democrats in opposition: Rep. Jesse Borjon of Topeka, Rep. Angel Roeser of Manhattan, Rep. Mark Schreiber of Emporia, and Rep. Sean Willcott of Holton.
Rep. Adam Smith, a Weskan Republican who chairs the House Taxation Committee, initially voted against the resolution but flipped his vote to ensure it would pass.
The current system for selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices emerged from a 1950s political scandal. A nine-member nominating commission reviews applications to fill a vacancy and selects three finalists for the governor to choose from. There is no Senate approval of the governor’s pick.
The commission members include one lawyer and one nonlawyer from each of the state’s four congressional districts, plus an additional lawyer who serves as chair. Kansas bar members elect the lawyers who serve on the commission, and the governor appoints the nonlawyers.
Rep. Bob Lewis, a Republican attorney from Garden City, said the voters of Kansas “threw the baby out with the bathwater” when they installed the system through a constitutional amendment in 1958. He said it was wrong that only lawyers could have input into a majority of the nominating commission members.
“I think it’s a rigged system, quite frankly, and it needs to be changed,” Lewis said.