Election Day Is Election Day Even in the Face of Terrorism

CNN is reporting that the idea floated a week or so back of authorizing a federal election commission to postpone the November presidential election in case of terrorism is now DOA. Lawmakers are livid over the idea, pundits are sputtering, and the Bush administration denies ever having planned to push the proposal in the first place.



This is the right choice, but it is important for folks to realize why this idea was brought up when there was pretty much no chance of it passing through Congress. (After all, we had elections during the Civil War when there was the real possibility of Southern sabotage at the polls, during both world wars when bombings were a real possibility, and during the Cold War when we knew Soviet agents wanted to skew election results.) This idea had to be brought up now - and widely rejected by Democratic and Republican sources - so that if a terrorist attack DOES happen on election day, no one can question the results. This goes a long way toward avoiding a protracted Florida-style legal battle by the loser in a close race if this were to happen.



Let us consider this hopefully-unlikely scenario. Bush and Kerry are neck and neck coming into the last days of the campaign. Statistically in a dead heat, with only a few battleground states left, both candidates, along with the wives, children, and handlers are appearing everywhere. It becomes clear that the election will come down to a single state - let's say Rhode Island. Suddenly, the morning of Election Day, white powder is found on the floor of a voting precinct in Providence, Rhode Island. Initial results are inconclusive, but it is the right consistency to be anthrax. All over the state, Rhode Islanders decide to stay home, rather than risk exposure and possible illness. We learn the next day that President Bush has won the state by only 100 votes, all cast at the Providence Rhode Island precinct where the anthrax was found. What would have happened? Al Gore showed us what probably would have happened if this scenario had not been talked out, and a consens!

us reached: lawsuit after lawsuit from John Kerry charging that "the people had not been fairly represented" and that a new election should be held. "They should have postponed the election until this issue was cleared up," partisans would have screamed. "But the Bush administration knew that terrorist attack would help themselves, so they did nothing!"



But now, the issue has been discussed. The Congress is in the process of drafting a resolution specifically forbidding the moving of Election Day without its own express approval. No matter what happens, our course is set. And hopefully, we will be spared this kind of nightmare. Then again, we were all praying that kind of nightmare would be spared us, anyway.