The Whig Party is Back!
Pennsylvania, in a particularly unwise practice, elects their judges. On Tuesday, one of the winngers was not a Democrat or a Republican. He was a Whig.
Robert Bucholz, who Rhawnhurst voters chose as Judge of Election for the 5th Division in the 56th Ward, became the first Whig elected in Philadelphia in 157 years. He beat out Democratic candidate Loretta Probasco, who received 24 votes to Bucholz’s 36.
Talk about low turnout.
“As neither a Republican nor Democrat, in a city with a reputation for electoral dishonesty, I am an honest broker in administering elections,” Bucholz said Wednesday in an email. Bucholz, an engineer who spends most of his time working for defense contractors, said he first began identifying himself as a Modern Whig three years ago.
See why electing judges is nonsense? Here is a new judge whose experience is not in the law, but in engineering for a defense contractor.
First founded in America in 1833, the Whig Party promoted consensus and compromise over partisan politics. Though the party counted among its ranks many prominent figures, including four U.S. presidents, it was virtually disbanded by 1856 after the issue of slavery exposed deep fissures within its membership.
But the movement was revived about five years ago after a group of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans began meeting in response to what they saw as the divisive nature of the county’s partisan political system. They went on to found the Modern Whig Party, which Time Magazine in 2010 named one of America’s “Top Ten Alternative Political Movements.” The party now has a Washington, D.C. headquarters and counts 25,000 to 30,000 members across the nation, according to statistics from The Modern Whig Party of America’s website.
“A basic tenet of the party is pragmatism,” Bucholz said. “They believe that politics is all about compromise instead of getting everything you want and giving up nothing. The recent gridlock in Washington could not have happened under Modern Whigs.”
On the other hand, I would love to see Scalia implode under the weight of a SCOTUS election.
This is an election judge, basically the guy that makes decisions on who is eligible to vote, not on criminal or civil cases. It will likely be an interesting post during elections where one party is trying to exclude voters.
DD wrote:
Uhhh, Mr Bucholz’s statement should have given you a clue: in Pennsylvania, Judges of Elections are not court judges, or anything like that, but the “chief poll worker supervising the operations of the polling place.“
Yeah, I missed that part. I still think it is a bad idea to elect any type of judge.
The Whigs now have more elected officials than the Libertarians.
Jason wrote:
Not quite, but you’re close enough. There are 144 Libertarian Party elected officials nationwide, but only 38 of them were elected in partisan campaign races. They are almost all in local offices.
DD wrote:
Why? Why should we have a class of officeholders who are not subject to the will of the people?
Think about it for a little bit idiot.
I’ve thought about it many times, and in a free state, our government leadership and public officeholders should be responsible to the people. Plato postulated a republic led by the superior philosopher-kings, but that’s not something of which I want any part.
Judges are responsible not to the people but to the law, which is why allowing elections of judges (and sheriffs) leads to corruption in the justice system.
I get a kick, however, from the idea of you thinking and thinking and thinking in order to come up with your simple-minded position.
One reason our country has been so successful is that we protect minority views from the majority. We don’t need judges who value being elected over equal protection under the law.