# Missouri Plan The **Missouri Plan** is the judicial-selection design adopted by Missouri in 1940 and since copied, with variations, by roughly twenty other states. It is the system usually called **merit selection** or, in Ballotpedia's taxonomy, **assisted appointment**. A nominating commission screens applicants for a judicial vacancy and sends the governor a short list — typically three names — from which the governor must choose. The appointee then serves an initial term and faces the voters in an unopposed yes/no **retention election** rather than a contested one. The plan was designed to remove two things at once: the party machine from the selection of judges, and the campaign from their continuation in office. It does not remove the voter, which is the detail that distinguishes it from a pure appointment system and the detail that makes it attackable — see [[State Judicial Selection Crosswalk]], which maps the design against the other four and finds that the retention election is the mechanism that has actually produced removals. The label hides the variable that matters. Nothing in the phrase "merit selection" says **who appoints the commission** — a bar-elected majority and a governor-appointed majority are both Missouri Plan systems and are not the same system. That question is what the 2026 Kansas amendment and the 2026 Oklahoma State Question 845 fights were both about. ## See also - [[State Judicial Selection Crosswalk]] - [[Judicial Independence]] - [[Judiciary Hub]]