Under Florida’s system of choosing Supreme Court justices, the governor makes the initial appointments, then voters get to decide every six years whether to keep them. This system of “retention elections” was intended to avoid the politicization of the courts associated with regular, multicandidate judicial elections.

It is not working out that way this time. Some conservatives are trying to purge three moderate justices facing a retention vote in November: R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince. The only Democratic appointees on the state’s seven-member court, they are being singled out for various rulings, including a decision in 2010 that blocked from the ballot a misleadingly worded constitutional amendment designed to permit the state to opt out of national health care reform.

An effort to remove the two Republican judges who voted with them on the case failed two years ago. But this year’s antiretention drive, which is being led by a group based in Orlando with ties to the Tea Party, Restore Justice 2012, appears more robust, and it is being aided and abetted by the Republican governor, Rick Scott.

Restore Justice is focusing on the judges’ records. For his part, the governor has seized on the judges’ sloppy but innocuous use of court staff to notarize required financial disclosure filings.