Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William MacLaughlin will head up a task force to evaluate judicial campaigns in the state and look at new models for campaign financing, including the possibility of creating a public financing option for California judicial candidates.

California Chief Justice Ronald George created the task force in response to concerns over judicial campaigns having the potential to undermine judicial impartiality. He emphasized that ""It is essential that we make every effort to avoid politicizing the judiciary so that public confidence in the quality, impartiality, and accountability of judges is protected and maintained.”

North Carolina was the first state in the country to create a full public financing option for judicial candidates. New Mexico recently passed a law to create a similar program and a number of states, among them Washington, Montana, and Georgia, are considering similar programs in response to the rising cost, and increasingly partisan nature of, elections to the bench.