One of the motivations for changing judicial selection in Mississippi was court modernization. In the 1970s, Mississippi's judicial systems ranked last on an index of legal professionalism. However, a second motivation was more political: it came in response to demands, and lawsuits, from the African American community to revise the judicial districts from which trial judges were elected in order to increase the number of African American judges. There was also a touch of partisanship involved because not long before the legislature voted to switch to nonpartisan judicial elections, a small number of incumbent judges running for reelection switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The legislature adopted nonpartisan judicial elections in 1994 on votes that did not evidence significant partisanship.