On Tuesday, Cleveland appellate court Judge Melody J. Stewart became the first African-American woman and the first African-American Democrat to be elected to the Ohio Supreme Court.

True, Stewart’s election may have had more to do with being the highest-rated judicial candidate in this year’s Supreme Court contests than with her race — or party. In an odd quirk, Ohio judicial elections are partisan in primaries but nominally nonpartisan in general elections, meaning party labels weren’t on the Nov. 6 ballot.

But when Stewart and fellow Cleveland jurist Michael P. Donnelly take their seats next year as associate justices, the state’s high court will have at least two Democrats on the seven-justice bench for the first time in 15 years. The last time that happened was from 1995 to 2004 when the late Francis E. Sweeney Sr. of the Cleveland area and Toledo Democrat Alice Robie Resnick both served. Currently the Ohio Supreme Court is all-Republican, and all-white. …

Change can often seem incremental in politics, and in the judiciary, but Ohioans in their votes last week affected a real difference on the state’s highest court.

–The Plain Dealer