DAVID SKOLNICK \ Politics Ruling on 2002 vacancy lacks guidelines

Imprisoned former U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. finally emerged on the right side in a case heard by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Too bad for Traficant it wasn't a successful appeal to overturn his prison sentence. The court rejected that appeal in May.
This one involved a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio against Gov. Bob Taft, who declined to order a special election in 2002 to replace Traficant in the 17th Congressional District. The U.S. House voted in July to kick Traficant out of the legislative body.
Traficant is serving eight years in a federal prison, convicted of 10 felony counts including bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
The court ruled in a 2-1 vote Monday, more than two years after the ACLU filed the case, that Taft should have ordered a special election to replace Traficant. Who says the wheels of justice grind slowly?
It certainly isn't a big deal for the 2002 election because the appeals court can't go back in time and order Taft to hold a special election -- unless the judges are holding out on us and have a time machine.
But political experts say the decision could set a legal precedent that will compel governors throughout the country to fill U.S. House vacancies. (The Constitution gives governors the power to fill vacant U.S. Senate seats through appointments, but calls for elections to replace House members.)
The U.S. Constitution and state law use the word "shall" when it comes to a governor's calling for a special primary and a special general election to fill a U.S. House vacancy.
Just days before Traficant was expelled from Congress, Taft said he "would be required to call a special election." But a few weeks later, Taft opted not to hold one.
The reasons were many, several of them valid. The two big ones were the expense and voter confusion.
Most local politicians didn't want a special election.
It was going to be a very expensive waste of time. The special primary would have cost $400,000 to Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. None of those counties had the money to pay for it.
The three counties also didn't have the $400,000 to pay for a special general election.
"Democracy is expensive," Scott Greenwood, the ACLU of Ohio's general counsel.
In a best-case scenario, there would have been unopposed primaries, and the special general election could have been held on the same day as the Nov. 5, 2002, general election. That would have meant no cost to the three counties.
But holding the special general and the regular general elections on the same day would have caused tremendous voter confusion.
Mahoning, most of Trumbull and all but a sliver of Columbiana made up the old 17th Congressional District in 2002. But because of state redistricting, the boundaries of the 17th changed significantly. The new 17th District, which took effect when the winner of the November 2002 general election was sworn in, was different from the old one.
The new 17th includes portions of Mahoning, Trumbull, Portage and Summit counties. Columbiana got moved to the 6th District. That would have meant Columbiana County voters would have voted for someone to represent them in the U.S. House for about five or six weeks in the old 17th, and then elect a 6th District congressman, who would start representing them in January.
By the way, no House votes were taken that year after Nov. 13, so the winner of the special election would have done next to nothing.
Also, because Traficant was indicted, the House ethics committee told him in January not to come to the Capitol -- something he did. So most of the Mahoning Valley was without representation in the U.S. House since late January. A few more weeks didn't hurt us.
While the 2-1 court decision reinforces the law of the land that governors shall hold elections to fill vacancies in the U.S. House, it failed to give any sort of time frame to do so. Without a time frame, the court left the door somewhat open in the future. The two judges essentially said a governor is obligated to hold a special election for vacant House seats, but didn't give any guidelines.