Thanks for reminding me -- US Senators are a bad example, of course, because of the temporary appointments clause. I wonder if different rules might apply for, say, state legislatures or local councils that use multi-seat districts and for which a vacancy is required to be filled by election as soon as possible. If a by-election/ special-election for one seat was pending at the time a second seat fell vacant, I imagine legislators would prefer to save costs by combining the two. TR

At 13:46 21-10-2002 -0500, you wrote:

I don't know about specific case authority on this point, but I do know that in
your scenario, the senior senator would not be up for reelection for at least
another two years.  Most states have laws empowering the governor to make an
appointment to fill the vacancy, with a special election to be held either some
number of months away or at the next regularly scheduled congressional
election.  Depending on how close to the junior senator's reelection day you
were, one could see an argument by the governor that he should be allowed his
prerogative of selecting an interim senator for a reasonable period of time.

"Tom Round (home)" wrote:

> As a matter of intellectual interest, does anyone know of statutory/
> constitutional provisions covering a situation analogous to that of a
> candidate withdrawing [=dying/ resigning] in mid-campaign -- where one or
> more additional vacancies occur for the same multi-seat electoral district?
> If an election (special or regular) is scheduled to fill the seat of the
> junior Senator for "West Dakota", say, and the senior Senator also dies or
> resigns a few months before the election, it would seem to make a lot of
> sense to fill the two vacancies together. However there would also be a
> strong argument for then allowing additional nominations -- each party
> would have nominated only one candidate for the longer-expected vacancy and
> would presumably welcome a chance to win an extra seat. It may be more
> complicated if the two vacancies, despite having the same electorate, are
> _not_ identical in legal powers or term of office -- if one is clearly
> senior in power (president/ VP) or has a longer term (junior/senior
> senator). Is there much, or any, existing jurisprudence on this sort of
> contingency?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Tom Round
> BA (Hons), LL.B (UQ), PhD (GU)
> Research Fellow, Key Centre for Ethics,
>          Law, Justice and Governance (KCELJAG)
> Room 1.10, Macrossan Building, Nathan Campus
>          Griffith University, Queensland (Australia) 4111
> Ph:     (061 or 07) 3875 3817
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> E-mail: T.Round@mailbox.gu.edu.au
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