According to this story, the Sunday, July 18 session of the West Virginia legislature was not able to pass the bill to establihs procedures for a special U.S. Senate election this year. The article presumes that the Governor will now proclaim a special election and set forth the administrative details. It will be interesting to see what he does about ballot access for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties. UPDATE: the Governor has called a 3:30 pm press conference on Monday, July 19, to discuss the topic of the special election. LATER UPDATE: the Press Conference has been postponed until Tuesday, July 20.
Methinks Machiavelli Manchin has shot himself in the foot. If he declares a special election by proclamation (courtesy of his Rat AG minion Darrell McGraw) and then enters it himself, it’ll be viewed as narcissistic and likely challenged in court. And, when he runs for senate in 2012, all of this scheming of his will come back to haunt him. Hello Joe should have had the foresight (and leadership ability) to have repaired our election law years ago when the media started discussing the possibility of an aging Byrd passing in office.
How EVIL bankrupt are the party hacks in the WV regime ???
Elected U.S.A. Senators since 1914-1918.
The party hack MORONS were NOT able to detect that there just might happen to be some vacancies every so often ???
Actually, according to the 17th Amendment, Manchin and McGraw would be constitutionally correct to call for a special election by proclamation (writ):
“…When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct…”
Still, if such writ of election did not provide for participation by independent and minor party candidates, there could be grounds for legal challenge.
We’ll find out in 60 minutes. Stay tuned.
The compromises have been reached and the bill appears to have just been passed:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000003704456
“The bill had appeared doomed, with lawmakers deadlocked on certain provisions and a tight election timetable making passage Monday necessary for the bill to be effective.
But state House and Senate conferees were able to produce a compromise bill Monday evening that appeared to resolve concerns. The bill will only apply to the 2010 elections to fill Byrd’s term and clarifies a variety of filing deadlines and other dates, the newspaper reported.”