Wildo7

Actually that's exactly what it means. Again, Democratic voters have vested this authority in the legislature. The only ones who are upset about it are Republicans who aren't going to be elected anyway. Not a single Democrat I know gives a ***** because they are willing to sacrifice preference between Dem candidates for expediency.

If you think the fact that they have the power to do this is wrong, then your more than welcome to vote in people that will change it.

Republicans just simply don't want the seat to be filled right away, because that would give the Dem majority the voter-mandated boost it deserves instead of letting it remain unfilled.

Basically, I never said anything like this.

Stokes

You are right, it was just something rattling around in my head as I thought about parallels between this situation and ones in which either a judicial branch should have stepped in and didn't, or in which they should have stayed on the sidelines and didn't. Not a good avenue of discussion, but maybe I can improve it with more thought.

Wildo7

I'm always up for talking about that stuff.

Real World

This has nothing to do with pub voters, or dem voters. Like Stokes said, independents out number both, and all of us are citizens of this state. This has everything to do with the people selecting their representation. Having the legal authority to do something is not what I'm talking about here. My point is that the people of the state are being whizzed on by hypocrite politicians, which is ok by you I guess.

It's nice to see that the people of Massachusetts will be spoken for, by a representative, err puppet, of the federal government. Hey, we should all be happy cuz the politicians have the authority to do it.

Mass. Gov says Obama discussed Kennedy replacement

09/18/2009 10:56:57 AM
By GLEN JOHNSON AP Political Writer

Gov. Deval Patrick said Friday that President Barack Obama had personally talked to him about changing the Senate succession law in Massachusetts, and White House aides were pushing for him to gain the power to temporarily replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy amid the administration's health care push.

A month after a White House spokesman labeled the issue a state matter, Patrick said he and Obama spoke about changing the law as they both attended Kennedy's funeral in Boston last month. He also said White House aides have been in contact frequently ever since and pushing for the change so they can regain their filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

"He and his whole team have been very clear about that," Patrick told reporters after holding a Cabinet meeting near his Berkshire Mountains vacation home.

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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy, 1897

Stokes

OK let's try this one then, what if the legal challenge is made on the basis that the law would be ex post facto? This is more generally applied to criminal proceedings but can be applied to civil matters as well. It is prohibited in the US Constitution (with the Supreme court having since made the criminal/civil distinction), but I'm not sure what the state constitution says about it. I think using this as a legal basis though we could envision a scenario where the MA supreme court strikes down the change based on the fact that it is being made to rectify a situation that has already happened (death of the Senator) and should therefore be subject to the law as it stood at the time of death, as opposed to one that may happen in the future.

So there would be at least a possible justification for legal challenge and overturn of the change. The whole thing that got me started on this was remembering your (correct) comments on tyranny of the majority in the gay marriage debate and how you views of this situation seemed to me a little conflicted with what I thought they would be. Not saying you were wrong in either case, in fact you were probably right, but your posts in this thread struck me as somewhat unlike you. That is not supposed to be an insult, just saying that you see the value in the law constraining the actions of those in power rather than those in power changing the law to justify their actions.

Stokes

Maybe the biggest lesson I can draw from this is that I think it is best for people to ALWAYS elect their representatives and do away with special appointments. From Blago to MA to Christ appointing his buddy to keep the seat warm for him, these things don't seem to be a good idea.

Also can I suggest Deval appoints himself and gets his ass out of the corner office?

Wildo7

Not to obfuscate, but I don't think this question is answerable without looking at the statutes and precedence set in both other states (persuasive), and Massachusetts (binding). So without being thoroughly versed on the evolution of vacancy appointments I can't answer fully. That being said, ex post facto really deals more with preventing the application of laws to individuals after an act that occurred during a time when the law as written did not exist so as to not unjustly burden an individual. I'm not entirely sure if a legal argument could be made that said X candidate incurred Y costs given the reasonable assumption that the election would take place given the statute at the time. But ignoring the fact that the simple argument would be something along the lines of "the law at the time allowed for the legislature to change the procedure, so the election was clearly foreseeable," that would still be a matter of an individual recovering damages rather than grounds to overturn the entire statute. But again, my very loose understanding of vacancy appointments is that legally it's been settled and this situation has arisen numerous times before.

I understand what you are saying, but beneath the surfaceit's two different matters. When I was talking about tyranny of the majority I meant the justifiable restrictions placed on democracy to protect individuals and groups of individuals from oppression of the democratically dominant majority. If this was a case where Democrats were trying to ban Christians from voting or something (assuming it wasn't unconstitutional) then I'd be totally against the Dems for unfairly imposing their will on a minority group. That's what the Supreme Court is for and it's why I don't believe that the gay marriage question or any other civil rights question should ever be "left up to the people to decide."

If there's a general argument to be had about whether any vacancy appointments should be allowed at all then I'm all for having that argument and to be honest I'm not entirely sure where I stand on that. But while this boils down to whether it's undemocratic, as Real World contends, I don't see the hypocrisy or abnormality of what the Democrats have done in changing the law back and forth. The entire reason for having that flexibility in the first place is to provide more efficiency. I can't think of any reason why any vacancy appointment would be free from partisanship, that seems to be the entire point of them.

So basically what I am saying is that either we should allow vacancy appointments in total or not, but trying to call out the other Party for using them in the way they were designed to be used seems silly. And if we are OK with vacancy appointments, I can't think of a single argument that could be made that it was more democratic to let a Republican Governor fill a Democrat's seat in a Democratic state than to change the law.

The problem with this situation, and what fuels the right's rhetoric here, is the misunderstanding that the laws governing vacancy appointments are meant to be a comprehensive prescription for every situation, since that's what most people think of when they think of laws. In this case, the laws are written specifically so that the legislature has the power to act in whatever way it seems fit at the time to preserve the democratic will of the people. In both cases, one by stopping the Republican Governor from appointing a Republican to fill a Dem's seat in a Dem state, and the other by granting the Dem Governor the ability to fill the seat simply as a function of efficiency, I think that democracy prevails far more than the alternative.

The power to fill a seat was never given to the Governor so that he could appoint a candidate from a different Party than both the former occupant and the majority of the voting public. The intent of the law was to maintain the will of the people while not having to have a time consuming election that would hinder their right to be represented. That's exactly why the legislature has the ability to do what they did and I see nothing wrong with the way they have gone about it, nor do I think it is in anyway hypocritical since they aren't prescribing any ethical outlook or comprehensive guidelines.

Wildo7

And you may be totally right about that, I'm actually inclined to agree with you. The problem is whether Mass citizens benefit more from being directly able to elect a representative while having to wait longer with the office unoccupied or whether they benefit more from quickly filling the seat and being represented for more of the time before the next regular election (2012). In this case I think that because it's such a Democratic state it's probably better to fill the seat quickly with a Dem the Governor chooses than have to wait however long it would take to elect a possibly different Dem and then start all over in 2012 anyway.

I think the perfect test for this problem is whether the appointment is being made because of the possibility that the other Party might get elected and I don't think that's the case here.

Wildo7

So your argument is really just an argument against all vacancy appointments entirely, and not solely to do with this case specifically? So then I can assume that you think it more Democratic to have an election for someone filling a Democrat's seat (that will almost assuredly be a Democrat anyway) who will occupy it for about 1 year, than to have 2 years representation from a Dem the Governor chooses? I'm not sure where I stand on that generally, but in Massachusetts think it's a huge waste of time and resources to go through the former only to reach a similar outcome, and that's why the State Constitution is flexible regarding this to begin with.

As far as Deval Patrick talking to Obama about the appointment, I can't think of a reason why a Democratic state, that elected a Democratic Senator, a Democratic governor and a Democratic President would be opposed to the governor talking to the President about who is best suited to work with him. I don't think you'll find too many in the majority in Massachusetts that agree with you either.

alvinnf

Of course that's the reason why? Their action is pretty telling of how they actually feel about being re-elected!