If Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo is confirmed to the post of CIA director in the Trump administration, it will leave his House seat vacant.
Pompeo was recently re-elected to a fourth term in Congress. He beat out three challengers in the general election--Democrat Dan Giroux, independent Miranda Allen and Libertarian Gordon Bakken--and received 61 percent of the vote.
If the 4th Congressional District seat is vacated, it will be filled by a special election, explains Bryan Caskey, elections director with the Kansas secretary of state’s office.
“When a letter of resignation is submitted, then the governor will proclaim a day of a special election," he says. "He has to do that within five days of receiving notice of the resignation. And the date of the special election is between 45 and 60 days.”
The state Republican and Democratic parties will hold congressional conventions to elect their new nominees. Independent candidates can also get on the ballot if they collect signatures from 4 percent of registered voters in the district, which covers south-central Kansas.
The Republican Fourth District Convention has 126 members; each county in the district automatically gets two delegates, with larger counties having more. Sedgwick County has 66 delegates.
Caskey says the last time Kansas held a special election for a House seat was in 1950. The last special election for a Senate seat was in 1996, when Sen. Bob Dole ran for president.
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