Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Senator Brown Demands To Be Seated

The Senate allows former Senator Kirk to continue voting in Senator Brown's place while delaying certification of the election:

In a letter Wednesday to Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, Brown counsel Daniel Winslow said he wanted the results of the Jan. 19 election certified by 11 a.m. Thursday so they could be forwarded to Senate officials for immediate action.

Hours earlier, Secretary of State William F. Galvin delivered official copies of the election results to the Governor's Council. And Patrick's staff announced the governor would sign Brown's election certificate in the council's presence — as is required by law — during a ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

Those actions would satisfy the timetable Winslow later outlined in his letter.

Brown upset Democrat Martha Coakley to win a Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for more than a half-century.

As pre-election polls showed him with a chance of winning, Brown complained when Galvin — a Democrat — said it would take him several weeks to certify the results because of a state law requiring a 10-day waiting period to receive absentee ballots. There also is an additional five-day waiting period for cities and towns to send him their official results.

On Jan. 20, Galvin sought to defuse the situation by sending the Senate clerk a letter saying it appeared Brown had won the election. Similar documents had previously allowed newly elected members of the House to be sworn in.

Yet officials in the Senate, similarly controlled by Democrats, said they needed an official certification from the governor before scheduling a ceremony with Vice President Joe Biden, who serves as president of the Senate.


The Senate has become useless except as a tool of the political parties for manipulative theatrics. Repeal the 17th Amendment so that these grandstanding politicians can be held accountable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

but the Director said that there we had to wait for 30 minutes. manager http://usspost.com/brown-demands-to-be-seated-usspost-4974/

A Lee said...

If you can argue that the Senate (not the House) has, in the past, accepted letters from a state's chief election official that only predict certification results as criteria for admitting a new member, then objections could be made.
Otherwise your gripe would be with the process used by Massachusetts for producing a certified result. If they are acting outside of the law, or even its spirit, then gripe away, but don't make swiss cheese arguments against the Senate for a state's failure.
-RLee
http://therleepost.blogspot.com