To be fair, with coroners it's more out of necessity than anything. One of the counties next to mine has few coroners and it's something of a problem, as you can imagine. We recently had a friend die and the coroner's report is still not complete, three weeks later. We still don't know what the cause of death is, and as it's suspected to to be a suicide, it's not been a fun time waiting for the results to come out. An elected coroner could relieve the burden by preforming reports on 'mundane' deaths and leave the more complicated cases to more experienced people. Again, it's not a good solution by any means, but it's a better solution than the one they have currently.
Because it is difficult to get people that are so well trained to work in that county, yet the work needs to be done. Many counties require that a coroner be a licensed MD with training/experience in the coroner's office. These costs necessitate a high salary to pay off such educational investments and also due to supply and demand. That particular county is very poor and there is little to attract such caliber of people outside of money. Money that largely does not exist. So, one solution is to take anyone that will volunteer for the job. One way to sugarcoat this is to elect the coroner and make it seem like 'the people' have taken this risk upon themselves. Sure, many elected coroners are well trained and very good at their jobs. But those people are not the issue. Having massively undertrained people do this job is glaringly stupid on just so many levels, but what other option exists? The job market has spoken.
Same things can be said about practically any professional job. If the job is required, it should pay market salary, as it does in essentially every other profession.
Why not elect system administrators? Everything you mention is true of them in many places as well.
I mean, I'm not arguing for this method, it is obviously crazy and has contributed to a lot of issues in other parts of the country [0]. I'm just giving the rationale I have heard from others.
It's really weird to me to see US reporting on suicide.
Journalists understand that suicide is contagious, but take no responsibility to decontaminate their own writing. The report you linked is written in a dangerous way. It will cause death.
Thanks, appreciate your response, though I must say it sounds like a post-factum rationalization to an existing practice, and not the real reason it got this way.
I would argue that we'd be better off not electing the prestige seeking people. We want the best person for the job, not someone viewing high offices as a prize.
It might also draw candidates who are better at running a campaign than at doing the work - in fact, it is most likely.
For almost all jobs, the common way of doing that is improve compensation and/or working conditions, and I see no reason a coroner should be different.
