Filling Vacancies

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

Mr. Tobin wrote:

For legislative and judicial positions, there is another option: a district
or state could go unrepresented, or at large elections could produce a body
smaller than authorized by law.  A problem arises if disapproval reduces the
size of the body to zero, or but this may be more theoretical than real, and
rules could be devised to deal with it. 
Thus, for legislative elections one could use Condorcet with "no winner" as
an alternative, rather than having a separate "approval/disapproval" option;
the former method should be less susceptible to strategic manipulation.  
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D- Election reform for legislative bodies means using some sort of
proportional representation method in which there will be no vacancies after
an election in most cases (unless death of an elected legislator,
disqualification, expulsion, etc.). For legislative body vacancies, I suggest
that each candidate/elected legislator specify his or her replacement from a
rank order list.

Executive office vacancies can be filled by the majority rule proportional
representation legislative body if there is no other provision (such as a
vice president succeeding a president--- most state constitutions have a
provision for succession by other elective state officers if a governor dies,
is disqualified, etc.).

For judicial vacancies, I suggest that the judges of another court fill the
vacancy (such as judges of a court of appeals filling vacancies in a supreme
court and vice versa- to take such vacancy-filling out of partisan politics--
in the U.S. every vacancy in the U.S. Supreme Court is now almost a
constitutional crisis due to the extremist politics in whoever is U.S.
President versus the U.S. Senate.).  The appointment of U.S. federal judges
by a U.S. President is a vestige of the British monarchy (see Blackstone's
Commentaries regarding the appointment powers of the British kings) and part
of the anti-democratic elitism that the 1787 Convention folk put into the
U.S. Constitution.