A Story about the Abuse of Power and the Stealing of Elections
By Greg Wersal

When most people go to vote, they have no idea who the judicial candidates are or why they should vote for them. This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. The judges who created this system want it to work that way. This is a story about how the judges of the Minnesota Supreme Court have abused their power and stolen elections.

The Minnesota Supreme Court got control of the election system because they control attorney licenses. If an attorney engages in unethical conduct, the Court will take away a lawyer’s license to practice law. The problem is that the Court said that normal campaign conduct was “unethical” conduct.

In a normal election, you would expect the candidate to tell you their views on legal and political issues. Then you, as a voter, would be able to make an intelligent choice when you vote. But the judges created a rule that it was unethical for a judicial candidate to state his views on legal and political issues.

In a normal election, you would expect the candidate to raise money so that he could get his message out to the public. But the Minnesota Supreme Court created a rule that made it unethical for judicial candidates to personally solicit campaign funds. These rules, created by the Minnesota Supreme Court, made it virtually impossible for a challenger to win against an incumbent judge. In a real sense these elections were sham elections. I hope to convince you they were stolen elections. These elections did not serve the public, but only served the interests of the incumbents who wanted to maintain their positions of power. Neither statutory law nor the Minnesota Constitution gave the Minnesota Supreme Court the power to control these elections. The Minnesota Constitution, in fact, gives the power over judicial election to the Legislature, not the court. “W]ithout apparent constitutional or statutory authority, the Minnesota Supreme Court has stepped into the legislative arena in an attempt to regulate the political climate of statewide elections, an authority seemingly granted only to the Minnesota legislature under its plenary powers. Minn. Const. art. 6, § 9; Minn. Stat. § 490.16; Minn. Stat. § 480.05. See Minn. Stat. §§ 200.01 et seq. (Minnesota legislature's enactments regarding statewide elections).” White ll

Judges have become policy makers in our society. They decide all sorts of issues from fiscal issues, such as school funding and state appropriations, to social issues such as criminal sentences and child custody. As public policy makers they should be accountable to the public and to your vote. That is a simple concept.

Greg Wersal believes that judges must be accountable to the Constitution and to the public. Greg believes in the right to vote and that people have a right to choose their judges. Greg believes in that simple concept and he believes it is worth fighting for. Greg Wersal’s story is that he fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for your right to vote and to make judges accountable. He has fought in the hearing rooms of the Minnesota Legislature. And he fights today in his election campaign to make judges accountable to the public.

Who is Greg Wersal? Greg Wersal is perhaps the lawyer judges hate most. This is because Greg Wersal has worked tirelessly to make judges accountable to the public through free, open and competitive elections.