The Swear Them In and They Vote Them In proposal on filling the County Commission vacancies is just a horrible idea. Who came up with it? I had first heard that it was in a footnote in Chancellor Fansler opinion. This is untrue. It is NOT in Chancellor Fansler's opinion.

For one thing, people would be sworn in and start voting who had not been preparing themselves for such a vote, but trying to win such a vote for themselves. Mostly likely, they will not be reading resumes of various other candidates, talking to various other candidates, etc. If they do start talking among themselves, will they start to lobby each other and cut deals among each other? This presumably would not violate the Open Meetings law, since they are not yet elected to the Commission, but is this a good thing to encourage?

And how would such interplay work out when the candidates start interacting with the Commissioners?

Most importantly, such a procedure will place a premium among the existing commissioners on controlling the order in which seats are filled. We will start to see the same kind of pushing and shoving we saw last time. John Valliant will become involved.

If anyone wants to maximize the "raw politics" we will see in County Commission trying again to fill these vacacncies, by all means, let's do this.