Much is being made of the possible special election that a federal court may force upon Illinois to fill the vacancy created by the Presidential election of Barack Obama.   I wrote last week about how that could be done for little to no cost.

However, another problem raised by opponents of the special election needs to be addressed,  the short period of time in which the Senator would serve.  In determining the length of that time, people are using the final canvass of votes as the determinant for when the new Senator would take office.

There is precedent though for the presumptive winner of  a special election to be sworn in before the final canvass is conducted.  In 2008, Bill Foster was elected on March 8 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Denny Hastert.  He was sworn in just 3 days later, despite the official canvass not happening for weeks afterward.

The minutes of the March 7, 2008 State Board of Elections meeting give some idea of the reasoning.

Discussion then moved to the request from the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives for unofficial election results of the March 8 special election. Member Brady indicated that he spoke with the Clerk’s office and it is their practice to evaluate unofficial results. If it is clear from the unofficial results who the victor is they would act immediately and seat the member. However, if it is a close election and they were unable to determine the results the Clerk’s office would not act on unofficial results.

If the same process were to be followed in the Senate, a special election winner in November could be seated by the end of election week.

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