HB 28-15: Filling Congressional Vacancies Fairly Amendment (Failed)

[Mike Thick]

I think "major party" would ultimately be punted to the courts, not Peebs. Not good regardless.

I will probably draft a bill tomorrow to sort this whole thing out and ask one of you people to introduce it.

[Sestak]

Pretty sure I know how this happened and some laborcord search-bar sleuthing has confirmed my suspicions. From the beginning the plan was to move the somewhat awkwardly placed major party definition into the Census Act from the FEA, hence its exclusion from FEA 2019.

The Census Act ended up taking a lot longer than the FEA since I was busier at the time (while I blitzed out the FEA in like a day or something), and somehow this bit got lost in the crossfire. There may have been an argument at some point about whether or not the definition should be changed and so that also caused me to punt on it. Ironically, the census act lists "organized party" in several points without defining it.

Anyway this can be fixed quickly by adding a single clause to §6 of the Census Act, which I encourage congress to do.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

The bill is unanimously rejected.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Would have been nice if these concerns were raised before the House passed this 6-1 the first time on essentially the same concept but with fewer restrictions and a shorter time frame.

Also because this has failed, the original unamended version passed 6-1 by the House needs to go back to the Senate again for a vote and be voted down for this to be killed off completely.