Only in Pennsylvania

The Times Leader out of NE Pennsylvania has some hard-to-believe news:

The late state Sen. James J. Rhoades may get elected to an eighth term, since Republican Party officials say his name will stay on the ballot in the three-way race for his northeastern Pennsylvania seat. Rhoades died Saturday from injuries he suffered in a car accident the night before, a little more than two weeks before the election. "The Republican Party is in full agreement that he should be on the ballot," Champ Holman, Rhoades' chief of staff and campaign chairman, said Monday. The Schuylkill County Republican and Senate Education Committee chairman had served in the state Senate since 1981, and Holman said some voters have already mailed in absentee ballots bearing his name.
Todd Nyquist, a spokesman for the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, confirmed that party officials will not seek to replace Rhoades on the ballot that also includes Democrat P.J. Symons and independent Dennis Baylor. Should Rhoades win despite his death, a special election would be held to pick a successor to fill out the remainder of the four-year term, said Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Leslie Amoros. A special election cannot be held less than 60 days after one is ordered by the Senate's presiding officer, giving the parties another two months to pick a candidate and wage a campaign.
In any case, an effort to replace Rhoades at this stage with another candidate might run into legal difficulty. The party would need an order from the state Commonwealth Court to replace Rhoades as the GOP candidate, but a court is likely to reject that effort out of fairness to voters who have already marked Rhoades' name on absentee ballots, Holman said. Besides, he said, the senator's offices have been fielding thousands of calls asking them not to take his name off the ballot. "It wouldn't be fair to the voter, it wouldn't be right and God knows it wouldn't be right to Jim Rhoades," Holman said. On Monday, Gov. Ed Rendell ordered flags at all state facilities in Pennsylvania lowered to half-staff in Rhoades' honor.

Rico says that's great, run a fucking dead guy for office and hope he wins...