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August 25, 2009
Principle at the NY Times
Massachusetts governors used to fill Senate vacancies. But in 2004, the Democratic majority in the State Legislature changed the law to require a special election. The leaders were concerned that if Senator John Kerry was elected president, Gov. Mitt Romney would appoint a fellow Republican. To change back now would look like an unseemly amount of partisanship in setting the rules for who goes to Congress. ... The best solution would be to amend the Constitution to require that all Senate vacancies be filled by election. Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has a proposal, which has bipartisan support, to do that.Replacing Senator Kennedy
This is a good suggestion. It is also helpful to solve the government continuity problem. Without a mechanism to replace senators by election, if enough senators are killed and the people who decide their replacements are killed, then the government can't do anything until they are replaced to make quorum. Voting for replacements if the current office holder died would ensure that even the worst interruption of government wouldn't last longer than a few months.
Posted by OneEyedMan at August 25, 2009 9:51 AM
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