Postponing elections

A few more thoughts following up on my previous post about the genuinely disturbing story about Bush administration contingency planning to postpone the national election in November in the event of a prior terrorist strike.

I haven't yet seen any Republican partisan comments on the story.  It's easy to guess the spin, with the Oxycontin crowd of course using a less clean-shaven variation:  "Why, it's just prudent planning.  Those hypocritical liberals have always complained that Bush didn't do enough to plan for terrorist attacks before 9/11.  Now they're criticizing him for planning ahead."

Yeah, nothing to see here, folks.  Move along.  Hey, do you think Kerry used Botox?  And, man, I bet John Edwards gets expensive haircuts, huh?

But us hardcore Jacksonians have kind of a thing about elections and stuff like that.  So I've been thinking more about the implications of that story.

The US Constitution requires Presidential elections.  Article II, Section 1 says of the presidential Electoral College:

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

If we managed to have elections on time during the Civil War, we can have elections on time in 2004.

The President of the United States does not have the authority to postpone presidential elections.  The Congress could change the date, but not delegate to the President the power to do that.

Now, the Ashcroft Justice Department and Rumsfeld Defense Department legal opinions used to justify torture in the gulag advanced the notion that the president has the inherent power to set aside any law or Constitutional provision that he decides is convenient in pursuit of his war powers.  But those "legal opinions" were justifications for committing crimes, to the point that those advancing such ideas in their official capacity could conceivably to considered co-conspirators in criminal acts.

Notice that the idea being discussed is to postpone the elections nationwide, on the theory that the 11-M attack in Madrid influenced the Spanish election.  Let's not forget that Spain, which just three short decades ago was still living under the Franco fascist dictatorship, held their elections on time, despite the attacks.

Now, a very specific practical problem could be presented by terrorist strikes in a particular location which made it impossible for the polling places to function properly on election day.  9/11/2001 was an election day in New York City, and the election did have to be rescheduled shortly after. 

There are probably some interesting legal questions about what a particular state might need to do in that case.  I say "state," because the states are responsible for conducting elections; it's not a federal responsibility.  Specialists in election law might have some other specific instances when a catastrophic event required an election to be rescheduled.  Presumably a severe traffic jam that prevented some people from getting to the polls wouldn't qualify. A terrorist strike that shut down the infrastructure of a city and had people staying at home in fear of their lives would be a more clear case.

But the point is that a democracy can't allow scheduled national elections to be set aside because the party that controls the Executive branch decides that some event might have an improper influence on the election.

It's a real sign of the authoritarian streak that chacterizes the Bush Dynasty and, increasinly, a Republican Party dominated by the Christian Right and neo-Confederate sympathizers.  And this is a pretty creepy quote ending the Newsweek article:

"We are reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election," says Brian Roehrkasse, a Homeland spokesman.

We're planning for postponing the election in order to "secure the election," says a spokesman for "Homeland."  That really is creepy.