This is a question from a Non-US perspective, so I may be entirely full of shit, because I am unaware of a nuance or a wider perspective. However it appears to me that holding public elections for ‘Law & Order’ style positions, appears to produce individuals pursuing the jobs, that are
A) Not necessarily the best qualified to do the job,
B) Beholden to interests that supported them in the election, and
C) in some cases resulting in an individual far more interested in securing arrests and/or convictions to the point of being biased, deliberately obtuse, or simply ignoring inconvenient facts.
What are the counter arguments/benefits of the direct elections for these types of positions that I’m missing?
The alternative will be an appointment after the election. It is often long-term and difficult to remove the appointee, but short term means it just changes with a vote for someone else. The same points you make apply to the appointees, except they are not directly removable through a vote. Remember that the appointment will be made by an elected official with just the same problems.
That’s not how it works in Canada. The starting point is that the prosecutions service, like the public service generally, is by law non-partisan. The independence of the prosecutions service is extremely important , and that is particularly important for the appointment of prosecutors. The upper levels of the prosecution service are appointed by the cabinet in most jurisdictions, but on the recommendation of the Attorney General, who acts in turn on the recommendation of the Deputy AG and the Director of Public Prosecutions, who are both non-partisan. The appointments are generally made from within the professional non-partisan prosecution service, or by open hire public competitions.
Crown prosecutors are politically neutral in carrying out their duties. Since they don’t face election, they don’t have to campaign on being " tough on crime" or “he’s locked up X% of his accuseds.” There’s no turn-over in the ranks of the Crowns after an election, even when there’s a change in government.
The Crown motto is: " The Crown neither wins or loses."
Someone appointed to the position may not be the best qualified for the job either. (Several states actually set minimum qualifications for someone to be elected sheriff.) An appointed official is beholden to those who appoint them and may not necessarily have the best interest of the people in mind. Honestly, the arguments you make above seem like valid arguments against the democratic process in general.
I find that Europeans are generally baffled by the sheer number of elected officials we have here in the United States. The long and the short of it is that many Americans felt electing officials made them more accountable to the people rather than a politician.
County prosecutors are elected in Ohio. They appoint their subordinates and, in a populous county, there may be very little turnover from election to election in a large office other than in the county prosecutor’s top management team. Electing prosecutors (and county commissioners, and recorders, treasurers, auditors, sheriffs and even coroners) is a legacy of the Progressive Era, when it was thought better to allow the people to choose their public officials rather than to have them handpicked by other politicians. The system doesn’t always produce disinterested philosopher-kings, to be sure. But I don’t think, all in all, that we have many more hacks and idjits by electing our prosecutors than we would if there were some kind of appointive system.
The outcomes of any governmental system are only as good as its sovereign. For democracies, that means the electorate needs to be informed voters. More layers between power and the electorate can mitigate its worst tendencies, but it also increases the points where the system can fail in other ways.
The reason why electing law enforcement officers seems odd to many non-Americans is that law enforcement is the type of public position where we don’t think direct accountability through elections is wise. Law enforcement has to enforce the law regardless whether it is popular or not, regardless whether they personally agree with the law or not, regardless who the alleged law-breaker may be.
All of those requirements seem incompatible with the idea of local popular elections. That critique is not anti-democratic, it’s based on the idea that not all public offices need to be filled by election, particularly if direct election may put the person in conflict with the obligations of the position.
Plus, there’s the ugly side of popular elections: What if the people want their law enforcement to be mean sons-a-bitches who don’t really care about fair enforcement of the law? Particularly if there’s a racial element involved?
Looking at you, Sheriff Arpaio: civil rights actions, federal civil rights conviction, several millions lost to the county to pay civil damages, but he kept getting elected. The popular accountability there seemed to favour unlawful conduct by the sheriff, because it was targeted at brown-skinned people.
How well did accountability to the people work when the majority in a particular community were whit, and the minority were black? How often did black sheriffs get elected in those areas, prior to Civil Rights Acts which imposed federal DOJ oversight on the local law-enforcement?
I don’t really disagree with any of that- but there’s really only three options. Either they are 1) directly elected , 2) appointed by a chain of people that ends in someone who is elected or 3) appointed by a monarch. Option 3 is of course not available in hte US, so we are left with 1 & 2. Even if you restrict the possible candidates to only those already in the ranks someone is going to have to choose the one person who gets the job- and I’m not so sure having the elected governor choose the District Attorney or the Attorney General ( even from among the current staff) is that much better than having a popular election for the office.
For that matter, why hire police officers? Why not elect them on a ward-by-ward basis, so you have an entirely elected police force? Would opposition to that approach be seen as anti-democratic?
I think you’re drawing too black and white a picture, by reducing the appointment process to one person. An alternative is to make the appointment process a collective decision, so the appointee does not owe their appointment to any one person. There can also be strict guarantees for the position, so that once appointed, that person has independence and guaranteed tenure, only removable for cause, defined in the statute.
And, there can also be statutory requirements for non-partisanship, as I mentioned in my earlier post. (I know that many US posters here seem sceptical that there can ever be non-partisanship, but that doesn’t match my experience in Canada. May be an artifact of our different political systems.). And, there can also be institutional guarantees for the people lower down in the organization, that they can only be dismissed for breach of professional standards, and only by the higher ups in the LEO organization, not the politicians. Essentially, a system of checks and balances within the organisation, designed to protect professionalism and non-partisanship, and shielding from political influence in a way that is not possible when the Chief or Sheriff is a politician.)
Note that in Canada, we combine your options 2 and 3: appointed by the monarch, on the advice of a group of elected officials (we don’t have any officials who are elected and have the sole appointing power), acting on the advice of the professionals. That diffusion of responsibility for the appointment, coupled with statutory guarantees of tenure and non-partisanship, greatly reduces the chance of political interference.
That depends on how you organise the appointing process and who takes the final decisions. Of course, if you insist on an elected politician having sole power of appointment the moment they come into office, then you’re right. But if you have a professionalised public service in the police and the prosecution service, with transparent criteria and processes for appointment, they can proceed independently of electoral cycles.
The bizarre thing about electing sheriffs in particular is that a large number of Americans (probably most) live in incorporated municipalities with appointed police chiefs, so it’s not some foreign concept for us to not elect the leader of our local police. I live in a city with its own police department, so when I vote for my county’s sheriff, I’m mostly voting for who runs the police service for where other people live (they do run the jail and provide court services for the whole county, though). And I don’t think it’s really an issue in my county, but it’s very easy to imagine that there are places where this…
…could be made even more problematic by a sheriff only policing some neighborhoods.
Yes, I’m afraid I think the “either / or” leading to mediocrity is too simplistic. It takes more work to design a system that encourages excellence than a simple appointment or election process, but properly designed, you get very good people, using professional standards, in the LEO.
We used to live with what was known as the spoils system where it was expected that a newly elected official would fill any appointed offices with his cronies. This did not sit well with some people which is one of the reasons we have so many elected officials here in the U.S.
In the United States, an appointed official typically serves at the pleasure of some elected official. An appointed official who is not doing their job or who is doing it poorly might remain in their position anyone if the politician who appointed them approves.
What about the other side? A sheriff who is a mean son-of-a-bitch might get voted out of office.
There were plenty of appointed law enforcement leaders in the past and the present who violated the Civil Rights of minorities.
I think you’re right about some of it being an artifact of the different political systems. In the systems I’m familiar with in the US, most of the people further down in the organization do have guarantees and are shielded from political influence. Some of it is also due to the way the US is structured as a number of states collected into a country rather than as a country divided into states/provinces/regions. But one thing I’m pretty certain of is that if the mayor couldn’t appoint the police commissioner without the approval of the city council, or if the governor couldn’t appoint the head of the department of social services without the approval of the state legislature , there would be a whole lot of vacancies at the top of a lot of city and state agencies. Just because a single elected official can’t make the appointment on his or her own doesn’t mean politics can’t come into it - I have a sneaking suspicion the whole Merrick Garland thing either couldn’t or wouldn’t have happened in Canada.