Putting Tram and Lou in the Hall together?

Now that Trammel is officially off the "regular" ballot, how long until he can be voted in by one of the other committees? I seem to remember reading somewhere a few years back that he needs to be off the regular ballot for x-number of years before he can be considered by the Veterans Committee. Is that true? And if so, how long until he's eligible for that? Might that committee wait to put Lou and Tram in the Hall together?

On a side note, I wonder if Trammell (and Lou for that matter) would have had a better shot of getting in on the regular ballot if they were both on it at the same time? I certainly think that with both of them together it would have made for a more impact-ful story which could have led to more people investigating the actual numbers and perhaps more votes.

And that of course leads to the discussion of the STUPID idea that there is a difference between a "First Ballot" HOFer and a "non-First Ballot" HOFer. The idea that some voters look at a player and think: "Yeah, he's good enough for the Hall, but he's not good enough for me to vote for him the first time he's on the ballot. Even though he's been retired for 5 years and won't be adding to his stats, I still need to wait a year before I consider him good enough for a vote."

I just don't get how that logic works in some voters heads. BUT, I understand it does exist and therefore I think the HOF voting needs to be amended slightly to take this phenomenon into account. Currently any player not getting 5% (I think) of the vote is dropped from any future consideration. I would amend the rules to say that anyone in their first year of eligibility needs only 1% of the vote to remain on the ballot. Obviously the year being their second year this number would revert to the 5% (or whatever the current number is), but given that many votes seem to automatically NOT vote for a marginal HOF player, I'd like the Hall to take this into consideration for determine who gets to stick around or be dropped.