That would be fun. I'm arguing with the "abolish the 17th amendment!!!" crowd on another thread. It would be interesting to see Illinois government officials attempt to appoint Sandi Jackson or something (or any really blatantly crooked RAT who wouldn't make it thru a RAT primary), just so the state legislature apologists here can see just how crooked state legislatures are.
Aside from their whole "everything the founders ever thought of is INFALLIBLE!!" argument (which they contradict by admitting they wouldn't want other post-1789 amendments abolished), they actually seem to believe that state politicians would choose better Senators than citizens. Why not have state politicians pick House members too? Wouldn't they want those wise, statesmanlike politicians picking out superior candidates for BOTH Houses? Why does the anti-17th amendment crowd want our "local" Congressmen to be inferior to those great Senators selected for us?
It reminds me of the "I'm against the death penalty because it's the easy way out and life in prison is a worse punishment -- but I'd allow the death penalty for terrorists" argument. So they want to give terrorists a "lesser" punishment?
There has been ONE appointment to the House. When James Inhofe was elected to the Senate in a special election in 1994 he took office as soon as the vote was certified.
Steve Largent who had been elected to Inhofe’s house seat was appointed by the Governor to serve the remainder of Inhofe’s final term in the House. The House did not object and I guess no one else did either, if they had they may have been able to prevent Largent’s seating.
The OK law used to appoint Largent is
http://oklegal.onenet.net/oklegal-cgi/get_statute?99/Title.26/26-12-101.html
Section B at the link
Section C allowed rat Senator Boren to resign AFTER his successor was elected in a special election rather than have his resignation trigger the election.
Both sections seem unoffensive to me but I do not know if they would survive a legal challenge as the US Constitution does not address the appointment of House members.