Suggested Revision to Texas Law

I noticed on a blog that I wandered onto early in the day that the blog was inundated by hits when he mentioned Megan Fox in his blog. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Fox  The blogger indicated that the only time that he had that many hits was when he mentioned Jessica Alba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Alba

That posed a problem for me because I didn’t have a clue who they were until I looked them up. I guess that there are problems with getting old.  I’m at the age where I consider Marg Helgenberger to be a sexy, young woman, so I guess that I should admit that I have gotten old somehow.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marg_Helgenberger

Anyway, my colleague Russ Austin passed away recently. For the last several weeks,  I’ve been watching two fine candidates scramble to get the Republican nomination to be on the ballot in November. This is necessary because if you die or otherwise leave office more than seventy five days before the next election, the respective parties, acting through their executive committees, get to place someone on the ballot, even though the office was not slated to up for election until 2010.

The law may be wonderful in theory, but it leaves a lot to be desired in practice. Hypothetically, what would happen if seventy seven days before the next general election, an officeholder passes away on a Friday evening? How likely is it that a political party could send the notices of a meeting and hold a meeting two days later?  Who would they get to run on such short notice? How could prospective candidates be screened in time so that the executive committees would have an idea on who was being placed in nomination?

And would you like to be a candidate given a tad more than seventy five days to put together a campaign? I wouldn’t!

My suggestion is that the time line needs to be pushed back, so that if an office becomes open less than six months before the next general election, the person picked to by the commissioners would not have to stand for election that November , unless the office was going to on the ballot in November anyway. In that case, if the nominee of the party died, the usual rules would apply for filing a vacancy on the ballot.  Wouldn’t that make a lot more sense?