Posted on 01/18/2006 7:21:57 PM PST by OrangeDaisy
NASHVILLE A federal court judge in Memphis late Wednesday blocked a planned Senate vote Thursday to overturn the Senate District 29 election and expel Sen. Ophelia Ford.
After a 50-minute hearing, U.S. Dist. Court Judge Bernice Donald issued a temporary restraining order barring the state Senate from taking any action to overturn the Sept. 15 special election that Ford won by 13 votes. She set a full hearing for Jan. 25.
The Senate was all but certain to vote Thursday morning to void the election and remove Ford from the District 29 seat. Acting as a "committee of the whole," the chamber had voted 17-14 Tuesday night to vacate the election because of illegal voting and other activity.
"Obviously because there is a restraining order we will not be moving forward," Senate Republican Leader Ron Ramsey said Wednesday. "Obviously Im disappointed but upon advice of my counsel thats all I can say at this time."
Fords lawyers filed a suit challenging the planned Senate vote Wednesday afternoon.
BTW, what race IS Ophelia Ford? She claims to be African American, but she looks lily white to me.
Link to Tennessean article http://www.ashlandcitytimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060119/NEWS0201/601190382/1291/MTCN01 of whic no portion may be posted.
SCOTUS did not act improperly in the Powell case. The House didn't *expel* Powell, since one can't expel a member until he has been seated. The House decided to *exclude* Powell under Article I, Section 5, but did so for reasons that were not included among the qualifications for a Representative in the Constitution. The House could have seated Powell and then expelled him, but the Democrat leadership that ran the House knew that they wouldn't be able to get 2/3 of members to vote to expel Powell (I guess it's easier to get votes to exclude than to expel, especially when the person knows that he'd get excluded with anythong above 50%+1, so the person knows that he won't be blamed by black voters for Powell's exclusion), soo they illegally excluded him. After the Court ruled for Powell and he was sworn in to the House, the House could have expelled him then, but it didn't have the 2/3 needed; the House did strip Powell of his seniority, which after all is an internal House rule that cannot be challenged by the courts.
"Legislators do not AFAIK need judicial permission to expel a member, which is an internal matter of theirs"
The first state office that former President Carter held, he aquired through the legislature over turning a corrupted election. Carter lost the election but was seated anyway. As a result of the vote fraud they passed a law that you could no longer vote if you had been dead more than three years.
Thanks for your clarification. I guess if Powell had only won by a handful of votes they could've refused to seat him, and once he had been seated they could with a 2/3 vote expel him, but they couldn't refuse to seat him at the beginning of a Congressional term just because they thought he was unsavory. Is that about right?
Yeah, that's correct.
I guess the House could have claimed that, even though Powell won handily, his election was due to voter fraud and thus exclude him, but there would have been hell to pay politically had the House subverted the will of the voters in such a crass and unethical manner; I mean, how much fraud would you need to prove in order to overturn an 80%-20% election?
Thanks, Gail, I check on Thad Matthews's website daily.
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