What happens if a representative quits or dies

The special primary election shall be held not less than one hundred twenty nor more than one hundred thirty-three days after the occurrence of the vacancy, and the special general election shall be held not less than seventy nor more than eighty days after the special primary election.

Nomination papers and nomination petitions shall be filed not later than thirty days after the date of the proclamation calling the election. Any court action challenging the nomination of a candidate shall be filed not later than p.

The superior court shall hear and render a decision within five days after the filing of the action. Beginning fifteen days before the date of the election, the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall mail early ballots within forty-eight hours after receipt of a complete and correct early ballot request from persons qualified to vote.

Section 4 was not meant to be a tool for circumventing the impeachment process or for punishing Presidents who make unpopular or unwise decisions. A President who falls into a coma plainly is. In between these extremes, though, lie a great variety of debatable cases. Instead of answering such questions in a clear-cut manner, the creators of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment employed a flexible term that allows for the case-by-case exercise of political and professional judgment. At the same time that it fails to iron out some important issues, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment fails to address other matters entirely.

Nor does it give any guidance on situations where both the President and Vice President have developed inabilities. Beyond the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the observation also points to some broader lessons concerning constitutional interpretation. Even when they set out to address a fairly concrete problem, constitutional drafters often find it infeasible—and undesirable—to give a precise answer because of the limits of foresight, the limits of language, and the difficulty of reaching agreement on particulars.

Supplying general principles or procedures is often the best that can be done. As a result, future decision-makers are given a great deal of leeway to determine how the Constitution best applies to the circumstances they face. Second, the interpretive puzzles raised by Section 4 underscore the importance of historical practice in constitutional law. Part of the reason why these puzzles persist is that we have not experienced Section 4 in action—and we therefore lack precedents to discipline legal analysis, generate shared understandings, and narrow the scope of discretion.

One might expect that a constitutional amendment as recent as the Twenty-Fifth would be easier to apply than a provision adopted centuries ago, but the very novelty of Section 4 has prevented its meaning from becoming at all settled.

The one place in American life where Section 4 has been used repeatedly is in movies, novels, and television shows, and this suggests a final lesson. On popular TV series such as 24 and House of Cards and in thrillers such as The Enemy Within , Section 4 has been at the center of elaborate plots to steal the presidency.

If, as some scholars have argued, the more realistic risk is that Vice Presidents and Cabinet officers will be too timid about calling out presidential inability when it exists, these associations of Section 4 with Machiavellian maneuvering are unhelpful. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is unusual. Most amendments are about individual rights or governmental powers; the Twenty-Fifth is one of a small number of amendments about technical procedures.

This essay will discuss why such amendments are so unusual, how the Twenty-Fifth Amendment was able to break that pattern, and how technical amendments like the Twenty-Fifth are susceptible to errors and omissions. The U. Constitution is one of the most difficult constitutions in the world to amend.

But the really hard part of passing an amendment is getting Congress to deal with it in the first place. Being a good idea is not enough to make something happen in Congress. Congress has limited space on its agenda, and typically it takes action only when doing so serves the interests of politically powerful constituencies.

There must be something in it for them. This is what makes the Twenty-Fifth Amendment so special. It was not a response to a surging political movement, and its terms were not directed at preventing a repeat of some recent disaster. It was just a good idea whose time had come.

Other than portions of the Twentieth Amendment, no other amendment came into the Constitution so much on its own intellectual merits. How did it happen, then? There were three important factors. First, on presidential disability, the impetus for change came from the White House. In Congress, hundreds of representatives and senators each consider hundreds of issues and balance the interests of hundreds of clamoring interest groups.

By contrast, when President Eisenhower suffered his serious health issues, he was just one man presented with one very stark reality: if he ever got really sick, the Constitution would not handle it well. This was particularly problematic in the middle of the Cold War. Second, the shocking assassination of President Kennedy in November created a brief window of opportunity, during which the nation was more inclined than usual to look at issues outside of the usual interest-group politics.

Third, and probably most important, was the extraordinary leadership of Senator Birch Bayh. There are only three qualifications: a representative must be at least 25 years old, have been a citizen of the United States for at least seven years, and must live in the state from which he or she is chosen. Efforts in Congress and the states to add requirements for office, such as durational residency rules or loyalty oaths, have been rejected by Congress and the courts.

In , the U. That right, along with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, was later used by the U. Article I, Section 2, also creates the way in which congressional districts are to be divided among the states. Particularly controversial was how to count slaves for the purposes of representation and taxation. If slaves were considered property, they would not be counted at all.

If they were considered people, they would be counted fully just as women, children and other non-voters were counted. Southern slave-owners viewed slaves as property, but they wanted them to be fully counted in order to increase their political power in Congress. Note: The framers did not use the word slave in the document. After the Civil War, the formula was changed with the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, which repealed the three-fifths rule.

This section also establishes that every 10 years, every adult in the country must answer a survey— a monumental task when people move as often as they do and when some people have no homes at all.