Nearly three in five likely voters support new state laws to empower an oversight committee to remove elected local prosecutors who do not prosecute violent crimes, according to a new Rasmussen Poll. Often called district attorneys or state attorneys, local chief prosecutors are publicly elected at county and sometimes city levels to steer criminal prosecutions on behalf of the people of a particular state. They have wide discretion in setting policies on when to file or drop criminal charges, what kind of criminal charges to file, and how cases travel through the criminal justice system. In the last decade, an increasing number of elected progressive prosecutors began to use the discretion at their disposal to go softer on certain crimes and decrease population behind bars. The poll, released Feb. 9,  also finds that the majority of likely voters support state laws that empower state attorney generals to appoint special prosecutors if …