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WHITE HOUSE✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Michigan Senate committee considers requirement for state funding in special legislative elections
Filed 56m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Pr · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Michigan Sen. Chedrick Greene, who took office after a special election, has introduced a bill requiring the state to reimburse local governments for the cost of state legislative special elections, estimated at $4,500 per precinct. County clerks testified that recent special elections cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in Saginaw and Midland counties combined, with little lead time to budget for them.
Republican Sen. Ed McBroom questioned whether reimbursement might tempt governors to delay calling special elections altogether, pointing to the 16 months Greene's own district sat vacant before Gov. Whitmer scheduled a vote. Local clerks argued they shouldn't have to finance elections they didn't cause, while the committee took testimony only and did not vote.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A seat sits empty for over a year and the fix that shows up is about who writes the check, not who waits in the dark without a representative. McBroom's worry is the right one: pay for the mess and you might just get more of it, scheduled whenever it's politically convenient. The clerks did the actual work here, running two elections on short notice and still balancing the books, which is more than can be said for the folks who left the seat open in the first place.
