SPRINGFIELD -- Voters approved a change in the way circuit and associate circuit judges are selected in the state's 31st Judicial Circuit, which includes only Greene County. With just 1 precinct left to report, the county clerk's office reported Question 1 was ahead with 62,195 people (51.81 percent) voting for it and 57,855 (48.19 percent) voting against it.

The change means a judicial selection commission will take applications and interview lawyers who want to be a judge when a vacancy occurs. The commission will then forward three names to the governor, who will select one of the three.

After a judge has been in office for at least a year, at the next general election, voters will decide whether to retain him or her on the bench. The judge will then serve a full term and stand again for retention.

The judicial selection commission for Greene County will have two citizens who aren’t lawyers, two lawyers, and the chief judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District.

Opponents argue that unelected judges are unaccountable judges who don't face consequences for their decisions. They also argue that trial lawyers have too much influence on the selection of judges. Both Gov. Matt Blunt and John Ashcroft -- a former governor, attorney general, U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general -- opposed it.

Greene County will be the fifth county (after St. Louis, Jackson, Clay and Platte counties) to adopt the plan for associate and circuit judges. The City of St. Louis also uses the plan, and Kansas City uses it for municipal court judges. It’s also been used for all three Courts of Appeal and the Missouri Supreme Court since 1945, when Missouri voters put the selection plan in the state constitution. Since then, other states have used the Missouri Plan as a model for selecting their judges.