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Massachusetts To Change Election Law?
Reports coming out today that the Massachusetts legislature might try to change the succession law to allow a temporary replacement to be appointed to fill the Kennedy seat. I will be interested to see the legal foundation for such a change (if it indeed happens, obviously rumors tend to fly at a time like this). As far as I can remember from my law school days you generally can’t make a law retroactive in cases like this.
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14 Responses to “Massachusetts To Change Election Law?”
“legal foundation” … we don't need no steenking “legal foundation”.
Well, since Deval Patrick's approval ratings are a couple of points below Mark Sanford's (in his case disappearing for awhile probably would have made him more popular), I'm not sure either the legislature or the population would want to give him the power anyway.
The Irony is that the law was changed before the 2000 election to what it is today in order to prevent Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican in case Kerry won the Presidency.
Andy, the law was changed prior to the 2004 election on the assumption that Mr. Kerry would be vacating his seat.
I'm not preoccupied with either propriety or adeptness at this time — these are lib Dems acting on behalf of Massachusetts, after all.
My attention is toward who will replace Kennedy. Barney Frank is a better choice than the other well-known logical successor, Deval Patrick, but do the lib Dems want to lose one of their heavyweights in a heavyweight role in the House, where all the craziest lib Dem action is, in Congress? Maybe not.
Then it could be Deval Patrick who gets the seat for now, if not someone else (who?) he might select.
I still say (it's lib Dems at work, after all) the following guy is also a likely candidate,
http://patrickkennedy.house.gov/
as well as Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, for example.
“Deval Patrick's approval ratings are a couple of points below Mark Sanford's”
To consider the recent succession antics of another Dem — he should consider “parachute” as a verb.
Gotta love the willingness of some to change the laws for the sake of partisan political goals.
You're right, I got my date wrong, thanks for the correction!
“you generally can’t make a law retroactive in cases like this”
Retroactive, in general as well as in this case: So often, why is that? When a person or group is obviously the subject _or_ the object, it screams, “Bill of attainder!”
Boston Herald reports “the fix is in”.
Mark Sanford! Solves two states' problems at the same time.
Can his widow take the seat? Living for a while in Missouri, in particular, makes me think of this.
Barney Frank? Have you lost your minds. It is truly sad to see what has happened to such a great State that gave us the likes of John Adams. Hopefully an election will see a fiscally responsible representative that will stop the debt and ruination of our great Nation.
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