This is obviously Sarah Palin’s fault, retroactively Washington Post
A statute buried in Arizona law states that if a public officeholder ceases to “discharge the duties of office for the period of three consecutive months,†the office shall be deemed vacant – at such time a special election could be called to fill the vacancy.
The law does not specify what those duties entail – it does not state, for instance, that a vacancy is declared if a member of Congress does not cast votes in Washington during a three-month period. And it could not be determined what Giffords’s legal recourse might be should she be incapacitated for more than 90 days.
Ye olde Washington Post finally gets around to saying Gov Brewster has no intention of triggering the statute, but, we all know that the evil fascist hatemongering teabaggers want her to.
