Hawaii has two members of the U.S. House of Representatives. One of them, Neil Abercrombie, has already announced that he will run for Governor in 2010. Not only that, he is planning to resign soon, because it is impossible for him to campaign for Governor while he is so far away in Washington, D.C.
However, the Hawaii Elections Office says it can’t afford to hold a special election to fill Abercrombie’s seat, and would leave it unfilled until mid-September, when the state is holding its regularly-scheduled primary for all partisan offices. Nothing in state law requires any state official to call a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House before September 2010. See this story.
That’s pretty odd considering that when Patsy Mink died in 2002, Hawaii held 2 special elections. She died a week after the primary where she had been renominated, she was posthumously re-elected in November to a new term. A special election was held at the end of November for the last month or so of the 2001-2003 term, and another in early January 2003 for the 2003-2005 term.
There is an annotation to the Hawaii law regarding US representative vacancies, which cites a 1983 opinion by the Hawaii Attorney General that the law is in conflict with the US Constitution. I suspect that it may have to do that the special election is not ordered by the governor.
1983 ????????
It was 1883 that the USA [via the local CEOs] started it’s over seas fascist imperial global empire by bullying the Honolulu native establishment.
Oh, but we Christians must ‘save’ the uneducated heathen from Paganism! [Christian Hawaii and Christians in the Philippines were the targets of American Pacific Expansionism!]
Candidates / incumbents in legislative bodies should have rank order lists to fill vacancies.
Default – the legislative body fills the vacancy.
NO more BAD voter turnouts in special elections.
#2 English colonies on the East coast were imperialist since day 1 in the 1600s — wiping out the American Indian tribes to about 1890 — then taking over the outer areas as colonies.
Uniform definition of Elector in ALL of the U.S.A. — to even give the colonies some voting rights.