It is rare for Senate special elections to fall outside the normal election calendar. It is even rarer for those special elections to take place in a matter of weeks instead of months. Such is the case in Massachusetts where voters go to the polls tomorrow to select nominees for the general election to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy. The primary takes place just 105 days after Kennedy’s August 25th death and just 96 days after the first candidate announced.
There was a lot of early activity in the race focusing both on when the election would actually be held and who would eventually run. The state legislature had changed the succession law in 2004 when Democratic Sen. John Kerry was his party’s presidential nominee in order to prevent then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney from appointing Kerry’s replacement had he won the race. The new law called for a special election to be held between 145 days and 160 days of a vacancy. While keeping the special election schedule, the legislature amended the law to allow the current
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