Talk:Maine's at-large congressional district

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I don't think it's correct that Joseph Dane was elected at-large. From what I can tell, it appears that he was elected from the 1st district, which had previously been the 14th district of Massachusetts. I don't see any evidence that he was elected by voters outside of MA-14/ME-1. In fact, ourcampaigns.com shows electoral results for both the special election which elected Dane in the 16th Congress and the regular election for the 17th Congress, and the numbers of votes are nearly identical, strongly suggesting that the elections were held in the same district. The relevant legislation stated that ‘‘in the election of Representatives in the Seventeenth Congress, the State of Massachusetts shall be entitled to choose 13 Representatives only; and the State of Maine shall be entitled to choose seven Representatives, That if the seat of any of the Representatives in the present Congress (Sixteenth), who were elected in and under the authority of the State of Massachusetts, and who are now inhabitants of the State of Maine, shall be vacated by death, resignation, or otherwise, such vacancy shall be supplied by a successor, who shall, at the time of his election, be an inhabitant of the State of Maine.’’ which appears to simply indicate that if the any of the old 14th-20th districts were vacated (as the former 14th was), it was to be filled by a resident of Maine, simply clarifying that, although the original election was under the authority of Massachusetts, any subsequent special elections would be under the authority of Maine, and it would be a resident of Maine, not of Massachusetts, who would fill it. The confusion appears to stem from the Congressional roster for the 16th Congress listing Dane as "Representative at large", but that seems to be an error stemming from the fact that he was the only Representative elected as a Representative of Maine in the 16th Congress~, and single Representatives are always described as "at large". For that reason, I'm removing him from here and editing the relevant articles XinaNicole (talk) 22:28, 24 January 2013 (UTC)