PA Bill Number: HB1472
Title: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contributions ...
Description: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contrib ...
Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT
Last Action Date: Apr 22, 2024
Pa. voters, beware - slippery ballot question ahead :: 10/24/2016
Pennsylvania has a ballot question almost certain to pass this November because most voters won’t know what it means.
One of the things it may mean is that baby boomers can’t admit we’re getting old.
The ballot question goes like this: “Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require that justices of the Supreme Court, judges and magisterial district judges be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 75 years?”
Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Jurists, who enjoy about as secure an elected position as exists, shouldn’t serve forever.
What you may not know, though, is that the mandatory retirement age is now 70. This ballot question is about giving judges five more years on the bench, not limiting them further.
Is it coincidence that we’re getting this question in the same year that the oldest baby boomers turn 70? Talking ’bout my generation, arguably the most self-celebratory lot in the history of humankind, at center stage since the first one among us picked up a Hula Hoop.
We always did chafe at the older generation’s rules, and now that so many of us are as gray as Granny Clampett, we’re seeking to redefine old.
Take Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Please. The man is 70 and the woman turns 69 on Wednesday. If that doesn’t seem particularly old, that’s because boomers already have successfully redefined the term.
If Mr. Trump wins, he’ll be the oldest president ever sworn in — edging Ronald Reagan by seven months — and if Ms. Clinton wins, she’ll be second only to Mr. Reagan. The only other president within three years of her is 68-year-old William Henry Harrison, who — cue the eerie harpsichord music — died a month after his 1841 inauguration.
But this column isn’t about our next president. It’s about Pennsylvania judges who don’t want to be forced to hang up their robes before they can squeeze 75 candles on their birthday cakes. Even if you think that update justified, the methodology here is sneaky.
We live in a state that doesn’t let citizens put questions on the ballot through an initiative or referendum; only America’s Largest Full-Time State Legislature can do that, and it seems intent to fool us with an incomplete question. Stay with me.
Some of you may remember voting on a referendum in the April primary. Back then, we were asked a straight question:
“Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require that justices of the Supreme Court, judges and justices of the peace (known as magisterial district judges) be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 75, instead of the current requirement that they be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 70?”
Some 2.4 million voted on that question and, among those who did, this question of no consequence was defeated. It was pointless because, not long before the primary, the Legislature decided to change the question language and move the referendum to November.
Former state Chief Justices Ronald D. Castille and Stephen Zappala Sr. and Philadelphia lawyer Richard A. Sprague called the new language “deceitful,” but their legal effort to toss it was squashed last month when the Supreme Court kept the status quo with a 3-3 vote. Chief Justice Thomas Saylor, who turns 70 in December, recused himself and thus helped to keep “this fraud on the Pennsylvania electorate,” as Justices Castille and Zappala called it.
Justice Max Baer, a Democrat who turns 70 next year and is next in line to be chief justice, was joined by Justices Sallie Updyke Mundy, a Republican, and Christine Donahue, a Democrat, in saying the new language is not misleading. Justices Debra McCloskey Todd, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht, all Democrats, disagreed.
Berwood Yost, chief methodologist for the Franklin & Marshall Poll, published a piece in last Sunday’s Post-Gazette about the ballot language. He found in a split-ballot experiment that voters presented with the current wording tended to vote “yes.” When asked if justices should be able to retire at 75 instead of 70, however, most say no.
Jay Lynch of Upper St. Clair (coincidentally the winner of this week’s Post-Gazette cartoon caption contest) emailed last week when he got his absentee ballot. Readers ought to be alerted to this misleading language, he said.
When I responded with my baby-boomer theory, he said that, at 63, his boomer view has nothing to do with thinking he’s young.
“I don’t want anyone my age passing judgment on me,” he said. “Don’t trust anyone over 60, not based on assumptions, but on the fact that I frequently can’t find my car when I leave the Home Depot.”
Vote no on this ballot question, folks, whatever generation you’re in. If judges and their friends in Harrisburg want more time to hold the scales of justice, they need to take their thumbs off the scales.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/brian-oneill/2016/10/23/Brian-O-Neill-column-for-Opinion-27.html
