ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York's Republican Assembly minority wants a special election to fill the expected vacancy in the U.S. Senate instead of allowing Democratic Gov. David Paterson to make a unilateral appointment through a secretive process. 

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, a Schenectady Republican, acknowledges a special election could take three months and cost as much as $20 million to seat Hillary Rodham Clinton's successor. He argues that it's well worth the effort to avoid diminishing democracy. 

He acknowledges his bill has little chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled Assembly, but says he seeks the same kind of grassroots movement he used to derail former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.