{First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru.}
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Before Arlen Specter’s Party switch announcement yesterday, the Senate’s Democratic caucus stood at 58 members. Senator-elect Al Franken represented Democrats’ 59th vote toward cloture, still short of reliably ending Republican filibusters. But now, with Specter joining the Democratic caucus, Senator-elect Franken represents the big 6-0, which is why Republicans will redouble their efforts to delay Senator-elect Franken’s seating – and why we in the netroots must redouble our efforts to send obstructionist Republicans a message and also provide them with adequate disincentive from delaying Senator-elect Franken’s seating any further. |
Since the “One Dollar a Day to Make Norm Coleman Go Away” effort started just a couple weeks ago, about $40,000 has been raised to remind the Republicans funding Norm Coleman’s endless appeals that, for every single day that they delay the implementation of the will of Minnesota voters, progressive voters will raise money to use against these Republicans on Election Day 2010.
Your support will strengthen that message!
| Norm Coleman and his fellow Republicans recently scored a success in further delaying Senator-elect Franken’s seating, as the trial schedule adopted by the state Supreme Court for Coleman’s appeal is such that oral arguments before the Court won’t begin until June 1st, over a month from now. Further, although Minnesota election policy dictates that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty must prepare and sign Senator-elect Franken’s election certificate once the state Supreme Court hands down its decision, Pawlenty has hemmed and hawed as to whether he would follow state election policy accordingly. |
With a D next to Arlen Specter’s name, Republicans will go full force to block Senator-elect Franken’s seating. Please join us in eliminating Republicans’ incentive to delay Senator-elect Franken’s seating any further by taking part in the “One Dollar a Day to Make Norm Coleman Go Away” effort. Above at right is video of the segment on MSNBC’s Hardball highlighting the effort.
to win a cloture vote since 59/99 rounds up to 60%.
You need three-fifths of the Senators “duly chosen and sworn.” There are 99 of those right now, and 3/5 of 99 is 59.4. So you need 59.4 Senators. Do you round that down to 59? Or, would the ruling be that 59.4 is more than 59, so you need 60, since 59 is not “three fifths”?
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p>Is there a parliamentarian among us? My guess is that with 99 Senators you need 60.
This came up during the discussion over seating Roland Burris of Illinois. Only 59 were needed for cloture when 98 Senators were seated (when both MN-Sen was still in recount and before Burris was seated), but once Burris was seated, bringing the Senate count to 99, cloture again required 60 votes.
… since the different kinds of ‘majorities’ are usually defined in terms of ‘minimums’. That implies that there is no rounding up.