Matt Shinners
There's an old superstition that things always come in threes. This summer, it seems as if politicians needing to be replaced in office or on the ballot fits the bill.
South Carolina's replacement has already happened. After Sen. Lindsey Graham died July 11, Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham's younger sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve out his term.
Because Graham had already won the June primary, a special Republican primary on August 11 will choose the November nominee. The insiders get the placeholder, but the voters still get the seat.
In Maine, Graham Platner won June's semi-open primary with record turnout, then withdrew July 10 over a sexual assault allegation he denies. Those voters won't pick his replacement—a 601-delegate party convention on July 25 will.
As IVN reported last week, that locks out the 31.5% of Maine's electorate registered as unenrolled—the same voters that will be needed to beat Susan Collins, including many who were able to vote in the Democratic primary.
The third seat hasn't opened yet, and the fight is already on.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized since June 14. Kentucky Republicans have spent five years legislating around who fills his seat: a 2021 law let the governor appoint from a list supplied by the departing senator's party, then a 2024 revision scrapped appointments entirely, and required a special election.
While the motive to strip Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of power was bad, the outcome was good, putting the power to select their senator in the hands of Kentuckians. However, Gov. Beshear has already indicated that he plans to use legal channels to challenge the law and appoint a replacement himself.
This carries eerie resemblances to the 2024 Democratic presidential process, which decided to skip a primary despite significant questions about President Biden’s ability to run for and serve out a second term based on health concerns that were highlighted during the first presidential debate.
Even though a serious contender, Rep. Dean Phillips, had thrown his hat in the ring. After Biden made the decision to drop out of the race, it wasn’t a primary that decided the next candidate, but rather a decision by party bosses to put forward Vice President Kamala Harris—a decision which many say contributed to her defeat in November.
Those three Senate seats are the headline. It may seem to make the superstition true. But the reality is that this practice is endemic to our political system.
Kentucky is one of only 5 states that call for an automatic special election, with others involving appointment for some period of time, usually by the governor. State legislatures can sometimes see a significant portion of their “elected” officials get their start through an appointment.
And parties will frequently play games with filing deadlines to make sure that only their preferred candidates show up on the ballot.
Maryland: Appointment As The Front Door to Office
Maryland might be the poster state for this practice. Under the state constitution, when a legislative seat comes open, the governor appoints a replacement whose name is submitted by the central committee of the same party as the departing member—and when the committee forwards a single name, the governor's sign-off is effectively a rubber stamp.
Roughly two dozen party insiders, not the district's voters, choose who represents tens of thousands of people.
This is not an occasional backstop. It is a primary pathway into the legislature. Of the 188 members of the Maryland General Assembly, nearly a quarter first arrived by appointment rather than election.
The reason this matters is the second-order effect. Appointees enter the next election as incumbents, usually running on a slate alongside the district's other sitting legislators. It is a structural advantage that reformers inside the party call wildly undemocratic, precisely because it hands newcomers the benefits of office before a single voter has weighed in.
The district becomes very hard to contest.
Montgomery County's District 16 has become the case study. Between early 2023 and mid-2024, the district saw four separate openings in its House and Senate delegation, each filled by the roughly two dozen members of the county Democratic Central Committee rather than by voters. It was not until the 2026 primary that residents got their first chance to weigh in on incumbents who had never before appeared on a ballot.
Compounding the problem is what some in Maryland call the domino effect. When a senator resigns, the seat is often filled by appointing a sitting delegate—which opens a second seat that is also filled by appointment. A single strategically timed exit can install two officeholders, neither of whom faced voters to get there.
Utah: The Governor's Pen, The Party's Hand
Utah reaches a similar result through a different door. On paper, the governor fills legislative vacancies. In practice, as Ballotpedia notes, the party holds the real power, because it recommends the successor and the governor appoints that person.
What distinguishes Utah is the machinery behind the recommendation: a delegate system that concentrates nominating power in a small pool of activists.
State delegates, chosen at neighborhood caucuses, can be summoned to special nominating conventions when an elected official vacates a seat mid-term, and at a Utah convention a candidate who clears 60% of the delegate vote becomes the nominee outright. A few hundred delegates—sometimes a few dozen in a given district—can effectively seat a legislator.
Illinois: Timing The Exit So Only One Successor Can File
Illinois's 4th Congressional District shows the same move executed through the calendar rather than an appointment. In November, Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García announced he would not seek reelection two days after the filing deadline had passed, leaving his chief of staff, Patty García as the only Democrat on the ballot, despite two others having indicated they were considering a run if the incumbent weren’t in the race.
These two—Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez and organizer Mayra Macías—ended up declaring as independents, which raised the signature requirements for the candidates from a few hundred to over ten thousand.
It isn’t an isolated incident: Montana's Steve Daines timed a retirement announcement to minutes before the filing deadline, with another candidate filing his intent to run 5 minutes later (and only 3 minutes before the deadline).
The Through-Line
Lay these cases out and the stakes come into focus. Only a handful of state legislatures throw it to the people, with most relying on a gubernatorial appointment (usually controlled by party leadership). Over a quarter of state legislators may have taken office not through an election but through an appointment.
And it’s not just appointments. As we’ve seen in Illinois and Montana, candidates aren’t above using the filing calendar and their incumbency to coordinate with hand-chosen successors to limit competition at the ballot box.
Plenty of reforms have been put forward to solve the issue: mandatory special elections, caretaker pledges, disqualifying appointees from the next primary, opening primaries to unaffiliated voters.
What's missing, in state after state, is any incentive for the people who benefit from the current system to change it…unless, as we’ve seen in Kentucky, it’s to remove power from someone from a different political party.
And even in that case, it’s yet another example of how political parties can warp our electoral systems to vest power in themselves rather than in the voters.