On October 31, Ohio Congressman John Boehner resigned his seat in the U.S. House. On November 1, Ohio Governor John Kasich set a June 7, 2016, special election to fill the 8th district seat. The special primary will be March 15. The June 2016 date will result in the voters of the 8th district having no representative for over seven months.
7 months is a ridiculous amount of time for 700+k people to be without a member of the House of Representatives to represent them.
Surely it must be possible to shorten the timetable?
The state could do as some states do for special elections, which is to allow all parties to nominate by convention instead of by primary. Or the state could do as Texas and Georgia do, which is to have a non-partisan election and just let the person with the most votes win.
Even with the need to have a primary, that’s ridiculous. 4 and half months until the primary, and then 10 weeks after the primary until the actual election?
Most nations could conduct an entire national general election campaign in that amount of time. Some could even do it twice.
At that point, you might as well just wait for the term to expire. Why take seven months to hold a special election for a term with only six months left in it by election day?
Texas has the possibility of a runoff in a special election.
Will congressional elections, overseas ballots have to be mailed out 6-1/2 weeks ahead of time.
The special primary is set to coincide with the regular primary.
UOCAVA and MOVE are greatly misunderstood. They do not even require that ballots be finalized 45 days before federal elections. Under MOVE, overseas voters may use FWABs (federal write-in absentee ballots), for example, which allow them to access the finalized ballots on-line and then send their votes in on FWABs. There are also exceptions that can be employed to hurry elections. UOCAVA and MOVE have absolutely nothing to do with Ohio’s lengthy delay.