Political party bosses in his native Cook County, Illinois had devised a reliable way to control the elections of candidates to office, including judges, through the invention of so-called 'bedsheet ballots.'
A 'bedsheet ballot' was a lengthy election paper with long lists of candidates for a wide variety of offices to govern a heavily populated area, such as Chicago.
He set forth several elements necessary for the success of a merit-selection system, of which the principal one is that the person publicly responsible for the appointment should be a single high-profile individual directly elected by popular vote.
[2] Kales died of typhoid fever in 1922[1] and did not live to see any state adopt a merit selection program for appointment of U.S. judges.
As of 2015, however, twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia had enacted statutory or constitutional laws to provide for some form of merit selection.