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.
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.
I think because we very pointedly jettisoned all noble titles as a component of a little kerfluffle about 250 years ago.
Oh sure, you and your LOGIC.
Sheriffs should absolutely not be elected. I’ve always thought that was bullshit.
The Republican candidate didn’t have a medical degree? I’d have thought that was a requirement for coroner.
An unqualified Republican candidate? What are the odds!
You do t have to be “qualified”, not being qualified can be a good thing. For example a medical review board, it’s good to have normal people because they are a check and balance and don’t let bad doctors off easily where doctors are bias and will.
The answer to bad scientists are good scientists. The answer to bad scientists is never a drywaller named jeff. Im gonna assume youd prefer your triple bypass is done by a heart surgeon and not a charismatic accountant who is keeping surgeons accountable. Stop drinking the koolaid and grow up.
Jeff will not be happy to hear this.
Jeff can console himself by realizing that he doesn’t have to pay back the student loans the scientists are paying.
No but he did have to deal with the grief of breaking into a trade profession that’s so old boys club dominated we might as well start calling them guilds again.
Jeff’s REALLY not going to want to hear that.
He’s doing drywall to pay for his Master’s in Economics.
Yeah, let’s get more unqualified people in power over women’s medical decisions! Or unqualified raciats into cororner positions so they can blame minorities for being murdered by the police!
Checks and balances!
lol, what?
“Normal” person: I think vaccines are bad! We should punish medical professionals for making at-risk people have them!
“Normal” person: I think we should force this woman to give birth to a fetus with no heartbeat. Because abortions and abortifacients bad.
“Normal” person: Yes, dewormer is an effective treatment for covid. We should punish doctors for refusing to administer it.
Last damn thing we need is normal people telling experts the validity of their expertise.
not being qualified can be a good thing. For example a medical review board,
That’s literally why Americans have the worst Healthcare. We let non-scientists make scientific decisions. Just stop.
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.
He was probably just enthusiastic about working with people who couldn’t rebuff his sexual advances
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 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.
