mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time . 
mr. chairman , the primary opposition to this legislation comes from people who have favored a constitutional amendment to provide for the appointment of substitute representatives should there be a catastrophe that wipes out a significant part or all of the house of representatives . 
i believe last year , the house of representatives laid that proposition to rest . 
we did have a full debate on the floor of the constitutional amendment that both the gentleman from washington ( mr. baird ) xz4000110 and the gentleman from california ( mr. rohrabacher ) xz4003430 supported . 
it only got 63 votes . 
twenty votes are necessary for the two-thirds majority necessary to propose amendments to the constitution on any subject , and i believe that the house of representatives at that time clearly and emphatically spoke in favor of maintaining elections as the only way one could enter the house of representatives , the people 's house . 
so now we hear that the 49 days that are proposed in this bill are too short to be able to organize a proper election in a time of crisis . 
i do not think that is correct . 
during the second world war , great britain was under attack constantly by the german air force , and even during the war they were able to hold special elections to fill vacancies in the house of commons within 42 days . 
democracy prevailed because the people of great britain insisted that it do so , and those elections worked and those people who were elected entered the house of commons with a mandate from the people . 
this bill will work just as well in a time of crisis as a way of repopulating the house . 
we are not going to have appointed representatives . 
the constitutional amendment has been overwhelmingly rejected here . 
so the responsible thing to do is to speed up the special election process , particularly in those states like california where it takes forever to fill a vacancy so that the states can have full representation as quickly as possible . 
pass the bill . 
mr. chairman , i yield back the balance of my time . 
ms. millender-mcdonald . 
mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time . 
mr. chairman , this bill is not a bill that will work . 
you have heard it from several members . 
this bill is unfair and is undemocratic . 
it has also been shown it is too short a time to conduct special elections in many states . 
it is insufficient time for voter registration and for those who want to participate in this unscheduled election . 
new voters will be blocked out of the system entirely . 
is this what we want , given the last election of 2004 ? 
i think not . 
this bill simply represents the wrong choices of values in a democracy . 
this bill should be voted down . 
