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Postponing elections
Jul. 12th, 2004 10:24 pmJack Balkin has a sane take on the legal issues involved in the government's recent trial balloon concerning contingency postponement of the election.
The practical and logical issues he cites toward the end are all well-expressed, but I have to believe he's trying his hardest to sound calm and measured here. My immediate reaction is that the whole thing is the biggest and most dangerous load of horseshit I've heard from the administration in some time, and that's saying something. We've gone through the burning of Washington, the Civil War, the Spanish flu and many close approaches to global nuclear war without, as far as I know, messing with the national elections as a result or even seriously considering it. I don't see how terrorist attacks are supposed to be different, unless we want to go out of our way to show special cravenness to the bad guys.
As one of his commenters mentions, there was an election scheduled in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, and it was postponed locally, in a sensible manner; such measures could be applied on a piecemeal basis even for the presidential election, as Balkin explains. There is no need to call or postpone the election nationally unless you're up to no good.
The practical and logical issues he cites toward the end are all well-expressed, but I have to believe he's trying his hardest to sound calm and measured here. My immediate reaction is that the whole thing is the biggest and most dangerous load of horseshit I've heard from the administration in some time, and that's saying something. We've gone through the burning of Washington, the Civil War, the Spanish flu and many close approaches to global nuclear war without, as far as I know, messing with the national elections as a result or even seriously considering it. I don't see how terrorist attacks are supposed to be different, unless we want to go out of our way to show special cravenness to the bad guys.
As one of his commenters mentions, there was an election scheduled in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, and it was postponed locally, in a sensible manner; such measures could be applied on a piecemeal basis even for the presidential election, as Balkin explains. There is no need to call or postpone the election nationally unless you're up to no good.