1.   Federal judges are appointed, while state judges are elected.

2.   Appellate judges also are elected on a partisan basis.

3.   As long as judges are elected in Texas, however, they have to be politicians.

4.   As long as judges are elected, however, campaigning and raising money will be necessary.

5.   All other judges are elected.

6.   Also killed was a plan to elect district judges on a nonpartisan basis.

7.   But trial judges here are elected in expensive and sometimes nasty campaigns that critics say leave judges owing political debts.

8.   Congress will elect new judges, under reforms approved in a referendum earlier this year.

9.   Forty-two states elect judges at some level, according to the American Bar Association.