“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.\u201d \u2013 Mark Twain<\/p>\n
The same is true for vacancy committees. Vacancy committees are small groups of party insiders who select replacements for legislators who voluntarily (e.g., resign) or involuntarily (e.g., die) vacate office.<\/p>\n
These groups can be composed of more than 100 individuals. But recent committees consisted of fewer than 20<\/a>, including one committee where 19 people determined who represented 165,000 people in the Colorado Senate and another where nine decided who would represent 88,000 people in the House.<\/p>\n And these vacancy committees are not composed of randomly selected voters from the electorate. Committee members must belong to the party controlling the vacated seat, eliminating more than half a district\u2019s voters in the first instance. Invariably, these committees are composed of the most politically active party members; the most conservative Republican apparatchiks and most progressive Democrats, creating committees composed of unrepresentative slices of an unrepresentative slice of the electorate.<\/p>\n Colorado has used this process since 1951.<\/p>\n If only a half-dozen legislators obtained seats by this method, few would notice. But over the past 20 years, obtaining seats through vacancy appointments<\/a> increased to where in the last session 30%\u00a0of Colorado\u2019s legislators obtained seats at some point through vacancy appointments.<\/p>\n