Troubling Article
Counterterrorism officials are looking into the possibility of postponing the November presidential election if there is a terrorist attack at election time, Newsweek reported Sunday.
Newsweek said DeForest Soaries, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, wants Ridge to ask Congress to pass legislation giving the government power to cancel or reschedule a federal election. Soaries said New York suspended primary elections on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, but the federal government does not appear to have that authority.
If this is truly under consideration, I'm not sure how they could do it in a way that protects against political meddling. Who would make the determination that an election needed to be suspended in mid-day and on what grounds? What would happen to votes already cast? Though I can imagine circumstances where this would be necessary and even a good idea, I'm not sure it'd be possible to write a law with tamper-proof safeguards that was flexible enough to be of use.
2 Comments:
At least they do need Congressional approval to alter the election date... I suspect that even if they could muster the votes in the Senate to pass such a measure -- which is dubious -- the Dems would at this point be willing to filibuster; they could keep people on the floor reading things about the Reichstag fire, excerpts from Orwell, articles criticizing ShrubCo, etc. :-)
Auros
Re: cancelling elections
One hundred and fourty years ago the Union held a bitterly fought election in the middle of the Civil War and survived. They had anti-war Democrats wanting peace at any price and the Republicans telling the folks to hang tough. Sound familar?
Now someone is saying that we would be incapable of holding an election because of some terrorist incident that could only seem trivial compared to that war. Come on, let's give the American people some credit!
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