>D- I mention the obvious. > >A legislative body can elect/ appoint (by a majority vote) any officer who >fails to get 50 percent plus 1 of the votes for the office from the voters.
Demorep, you advocate this sort of thing a lot, but frankly I don't think it's a good idea to throw things to the legislature in the case of a divided/unsatisfied electorate. This seems like just an additional level of "indirectness" to me. Maybe the legislature will do a better job sometimes, but I'd rather go with the best candidate among whatever slim pickings the public was presented with. One solution (I've heard Rob L mention it; surely he's not the first on this list to do so) is to shorten the term of the official if they fail to win an approval majority. Say, cut the president's term down to two years or something. This is a very significant penalty, but more to the point it gives the people a chance to look at a better candidate more quickly. Now I bet that Demorep thinks two years is two too many for a minority approved candidate. But do we have any assurances that the legislature won't pick somebody WORSE? We don't, really. In times of severe factionalism, the best you can hope to do is elect the candidate with the broadest support, and hope that a more popular candidate emerges soon. Otherwise, you risk turning the entire election procedure into a farce during periods like this. -Adam ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
