I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone tried to make a little political hay out of the political mess that is Illinois politics right now. And Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold fired the opening salvo today at Big Orange, announcing his intention to sponsor a bill to amend the federal Constitution to require that all vacancies in the Senate be filled by special election, just as they are for vacancies in the House. Markos seconded the idea, and I see that the editorial board of the Washington Post actually beat both of them to the punch.
Well, since they're all for democracy and power to the people, this Democrat votes "Nay."
I think the Seventeenth Amendment as it now stands is perfectly adequate to our needs. If the Blagojevich mess requires any kind of constitutional remediation, I would argue that what needs amending is the state Constitution, not the federal one. If we'd had a recall provision in our state Constitution, Rod Blagojevich would almost certainly not have been in a position to attempt to barter an appointment to fill President Obama's vacant Senate seat for his personal gain--he'd have been tossed out on his ear at least a couple of years ago.
As it now reads, the Seventeenth Amendment leaves it up to the individual states to decide how they want to proceed when a Senate seat falls vacant for some reason. The amendment sets the default as an election, by requiring the state's executive to issue writs of election to fill the vacancy. But it then gives the states the option to opt out, by allowing the various state legislatures the opportunity to pass laws allowing that state's governor to fill such vacancies by appointment "until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct." I think the fact that only four states (Oregon, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma--though there's an exception in the last-named state, such that if the vacancy occurs after March 1 of any even-numbered year and the term expires the following year, no special election is held; rather, the governor is required to appoint the candidate elected in the regular general election to fill the unexpired term) do not fill vacancies by appointment suggests that this is not an issue of particularly grave concern to the populace to begin with--and I would be enormously surprised if it were terribly high on anyone's list of things they would like to see the 111th Congress take up this early in its term as opposed to, say, economic stimulus packages, a new federal budget, or ending the war in Iraq.
The main argument (if indeed it can be dignified with that name) behind this amendment is that it gives more power to the people. I think that's a load of bunk. The people already have the power to give themselves that power, if they want it--so the amendment is superfluous on its face. More importantly, it's a hollow power, as I'll explain in a bit.
Another argument behind this change is that the wrangling over who has the right to make an appointment, or who should get appointed, means a lengthy fight that effectively deprives the affected state of some of its representation at the federal level. This argument, too, fails to hold water. I don't recall anyone complaining that South Dakota was being unfairly stripped of one-third of its Washington delegation during the nine months when its senior senator, Tim Johnson, was undergoing rehabilitation after he suffered what amounted to a stroke in December 2006. (He did not return to the Senate until September 2007.) Nor can I recall having heard anyone suggest that Massachusetts was in any way impaired by the fact that its senior senator is currently suffering from a malignant brain tumor for which he is apparently undergoing both chemotherapy and radiation. For that matter, where were the cries of outrage over the last two years when then-Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama were stumping around the nation trying to get themselves elected president and, consequently, spending almost no time working at their actual jobs?
But that second argument spawns a separate problem. Namely, if the concern is to get the vacancy filled as quickly as possible, that's going to pose tremendous issues for those states (and many, if not all, of the electoral units therein) that have to mount a special election. It's one thing if you can do it at one of the regularly scheduled times--it's adding another line to the ballot that you already have to print anyway. But unless the proposed amendment can find some way to guarantee that those vacating or otherwise leaving behind a Senate seat will do so in a timely fashion that gives their home states plenty of time to put the race on a ballot in a regularly scheduled election (which would not have been the case in Illinois to find a replacement for President Obama, by the by), you can't count on that always being the case. And that means a tremendous amount of hassles and extra expenses for the states in question.
There are always elections in even-numbered years, because those are the years in which we have federal elections. But that may not always be the case in odd-numbered years, which are generally devoted to state and local elections. If there are no state elections in the offing, and no open races or ballot questions in such years, many electoral units opt not to bother--because elections are damned expensive, as the state of Illinois has learned all too well of late. By one estimate, the special election in my congressional district to replace Dennis Hastert when he retired from the House early cost around $10,000 per precinct--or somewhere around $3 million for the whole district--and that was with one of the two special elections (primary and general) piggybacked on an election that was already scheduled. That same estimate figured that at half the cost for a statewide election to fill a Senate vacancy, the total cost would be at least $45 million, given that there are more than 11,000 electoral precincts in Illinois. Given that the state is already $2 billion in the red this year and no end to the hemorrhaging in sight, I have to think that anybody who suggested we spend $50 billion we don't have to on an election nobody in Illinois seems to want all that badly would not be received well by the general populace--especially if the costs associated with that election meant that our crappy roads would go even longer without being fixed, our crumbling infrastructure would be left to crumble awhile longer, and vendors doing business with the state would have to wait even longer than they do already to get paid.
And then there's the fact that if we have to rush to get the election done so that the state doesn't lose any of its representation in Washington, the voters are going to have little or no say in picking the candidates who will run in this special election. That also means it is extremely unlikely that there will be any candidates in the race from any party other than the Democrats or the Republicans. There won't be time for primaries, there won't be time for extensive debates, or any of the usual means of building support for an electoral bid. The most likely scenario, as I see it, is that we'll go from having an elected governor make an appointment to having unelected party flacks pulling names out of a hat in a smoky back room somewhere, after which we get to vote to pick the lesser of two (and only two) evils. This is democratic how, again?
And let's not forget that voter turnout in special elections is abysmal even by American standards, where people get positively ecstatic if more than 50% of the registered voters turn out once every four years to vote for president. I believe turnout for the special election to replace Hastert (or at least that portion of it that was not tied to a regular election) was something on the order of about 15%. Which is quite likely to mean that it is only the most reactionary or the most extreme candidates that are ever going to win in these things--because those tend to be the voters who are motivated to go the extra mile and vote whenever they're given an opportunity to do so.
So no, I don't believe I'll be supporting this if it ever manages to get put to a vote. And I would urge Senator Feingold to reconsider whether this is really an issue he wants to ask Congress to spend any time at all on right now--or ever, frankly.
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