It would be easy to throw stones at William Howell, the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates, as being the one ultimately at fault in what we see as an irresponsible timetable for filling the 48th District House of Delegates seat that has been vacated by Democrat Bob Brink. But the situation is somewhat more complicated.

Brink’s long-rumored departure came on June 30, just a few days after he announced plans to depart the General Assembly for a post in the McAuliffe administration. Because the legislature was still in session, the power to set the special election to replace him fell to Howell rather than to the governor, who has that authority when legislators are out of town.

Howell set the date of the special election for Aug. 19, which seems reasonable enough . . . until you consider that, under the timetable enshrined in state law, Republicans and Democrats had just a week – until July 7 – to submit their nominees to the State Board of Elections.

That required both parties to scramble, but particularly impacted Democrats, since the 48th traditionally has been a reliably Democratic seat. The party held caucus voting Sunday at McLean and Yorktown high schools to come up with their nominee.

Most prospective voters had never heard of most of the candidates, let alone pondered their views on the issues, during this one-week sprint. It’s a heck of a way to run a representative democracy.

Before bashing Howell too much, keep in mind that he did voters and political parties in the 48th two favors:

* He conveniently ignored the part of state law that requires parties to have their nominees within five days of the writ of election, and gave them five business days. That provided a grace period of three days when Independence Day was factored in.

* He could have opted to set the special election for the day after Labor Day (Sept. 2), but by the Byzantine state election rules, we’re told that would have required political parties to have submitted their nominees by, of all days, July 4.

But Howell does not escape blame. He could have set the special election to run concurrently with the Nov. 4 general election, which would have given the parties more time to get their nominees in place.

And of course, Brink and Gov. McAuliffe could have done their part, by announcing this appointment earlier and given the parties a chance to start their planning before a vacancy occurred.

To sum up, there’s a lot of blame to go around, and it would be wise of the General Assembly to try and provide a little more common sense to laws that pertain to special elections.

We’re not fans of campaigns that run on so long they feel like marathons. But sprints are just as bad, and likely worse.

Reforming the process should be on the General Assembly’s 2015 to-do list.