-By Warner Todd Huston
It seems like a story written by a bad Hollywood script writer, but Illinois Senator Roland Burris is today challenging a federal judge’s decision to block any more candidates from being added to the ballot of the special election that has been ordered to fill the last few weeks of this Congressional session. Burris wants to be on that ballot but the judge said that only party nominees from the primary are allowed to be on the special election ballot.
First of all the whole thing is confusing. When Barack Obama vacated his Senate seat to take the White House, disgraced Governor Rod Blagojevich underwent a decision process to fill that seat that ended up getting him indicted. Blago gave the seat to long-time Illinois politico Roland Burris. Burris’ appointed term is up on election day but that would leave Illinois without a second Senator for the last 60 days of the legislative session. So, a federal judge declared that Illinois would have to vote on both a special election to seat a Senator for 60 days as well as the regular election for the full term starting after that in 2011.
The federal judge, though, ruled that only the candidates that will also appear on the general election ballot are eligible for inclusion on the special election ballot. That is what Burris is contesting. He thinks he should be allowed to run for that special.
If Burris gets his way, it might assure that Mark Kirk wins the special election. After all, many Democrats will abandon Democratic nominee Alexi Giannoulias to vote for Burris and this could drain just enough votes from Giannoulias to give the 60-day seat to Kirk. And this is only if Giannoulias is strong enough to beat Kirk on his own without a Burris buttinski getting in his way. And polls show that Giannoulais is very weak on that count.
For his part, Roland Burris is BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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