of their terms; Mike Hancock simultaneously held a council seat and a seat in Parliament between his election to Parliament in 1997 and his defeat in the local elections in 2014. United States Federal The United States Constitution prohibits members of the Senate or House from holding positions within the Executive Branch (Art. I, Sec. 6, cl. 2), and limits the president to his salary as chief executive, saying he may not "receive... any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them" (Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 7). However, the Constitution places no restrictions that would prevent state or local office holders from simultaneously holding office in any branch of the federal government. Historically, the U.S. inherited many basic political traditions from Great Britain, which in the eighteenth century tolerated several different forms of dual mandate. Following the establishment of the original Continental Congress and later Confederation Congress, the states possessed absolute discretion in regards to how delegates were chosen to serve, and it became common for state legislatures to appoint members from within their own ranks to Congress. At the time, this was a largely uncontroversial practise since it was widely assumed that the Congress would have relatively little to do (especially in peacetime) and that most of the consequential decision-making would take place at the state and local levels. A ban on dual mandates would therefore have been widely seen as unnecessary and unwelcome as it would have effectively barred Congressional delegates from what were perceived to be more important political posts, thus making election to the national Congress (already seen as a considerable burden due to the difficulties of eighteenth century travel) quite undesirable. During the convention that established the present U.S. constitution, attention was primarily given to designing a federal government with branches that would be able operate independently of each other and free of undesirable foreign influence, which resulted in the aforementioned prohibitions. Barring state and local officials from federal office was not seriously debated. If it had been, it would likely have been fiercely opposed especially by the nascent anti-Federalist movement, many of whose members were keen to ensure that state officials with a vested interest in defending states' rights would be allowed to also serve simultaneously at the federal level, especially in Congress. For the first few decades after the First United States Congress convened in 1789, Congress met infrequently and