Voters will hear a little more about judges' political leanings in future campaigns, thanks to a change in court rules by a reluctant Ohio Supreme Court.

The change adds further scrutiny to the election of judges, a process that increasingly worries advocates who want to make such campaigns less political.

Last fall, for example, a record 15 states saw outside groups running TV ads for and against state judicial candidates.

''When voters make choices in judicial elections based on political party identification, they can often times end up with a case of buyer's remorse,'' said Jesse Rutledge, spokesman for Washington-based Justice at Stake, an advocacy group formed in 2002 to monitor court races.

The state Supreme Court last month said candidates can now identify their political party in advertising through an entire election season.

A former court rule limited any advertising of the party affiliation to primaries.

''I disagree generally with doing anything that makes the campaign more political,'' Chief Justice Thomas Moyer said in an interview. ''But I'm a realist - this appears not to be the general view.''

Ohioans elect judges to municipal, county, appeals and Supreme Court seats, where the officeholders oversee cases involving the most minor thefts to the worst murders.

Judges also handle thousands of lawsuits each year on issues from business fraud to workplace injuries to school funding.

Moyer has long tried to keep campaigns as neutral as possible, arguing unsuccessfully for letting judges be selected rather than elected.

Opponents of more openness in judicial campaigns say judges who take positions on the campaign trail will find it hard to issue impartial decisions once elected.

Moyer doesn't like the idea of letting judges reveal party affiliation throughout a race, but a federal judge's ruling last fall gave him no choice.

In that decision, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aldrich said prohibiting candidates from advertising their party affiliation was unconstitutional.

The ruling went in favor of Judge William O'Neill and his contention that state court rules limiting candidates' campaign behavior violates the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment ''does not permit the state to dictate what information voters may be 'trusted' with,'' Aldrich said. O'Neill, a Democrat, was defeated by Republican Justice Terrence O'Donnell in the November election.

The change in the state Supreme Court rules is also consistent with a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in June 2002, said Ohio State University law professor David Goldberger.

In that decision, the court ruled that judicial candidates may talk more freely about controversial issues like abortion and school prayer while campaigning.

People don't know who judicial candidates really are, and party affiliation would help give voters more information about the judges running for office, Goldberger said.

Goldberger doesn't buy the argument that the information will taint the process for electing judges by making campaigns more political.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002, judicial elections followed the premise that ''ignorance of the voter was the best thing,'' Goldberger said. ''And that's the opposite of how political democracy works. It seems to me the need for an informed electorate trumps almost every other concern.''

The immediate impact of the court's rule change is hard to measure, said Marianna Brown Bettman, a University of Cincinnati law professor.

Political parties have long promoted their candidates in campaign literature, and third-party groups are doing so even more, she said.

''For all practical purposes, I think people already know,'' Bettman said.

But Ohio still has a nonpartisan judicial ballot, meaning people will see names but no party affiliations in voting booths, notes Jonathan Entin, a Case Western Reserve University law professor.

''The reason the Ohio Supreme Court is reluctant to suspend this rule is they see this, probably correctly, as a way some judicial candidates will circumvent the ground rules for elections, which is that general election ballot doesn't identify the party,'' Entin said.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins covers the statehouse for the Ohio Associated Press.