Nuff Said

[geminigirl]

I think one of the most terrifying things I've ever heard is talk about postponing the elections in the event of another terrorist attack.

Absolultely not. It shouldn't happen.

We've held elections in wartime, in peacetime, in the midst of natural disasters.

The elections should happen, this Novemeber as planned. Not later.

Comments

[moshah.livejournal.com]

I tend to disagree. If there was another 9/11 style attack the day of or immediately before election day, I think it would be prudent to have a contigency plan that includes investigating postponing the elections to a later date. If there *was* an election during such a time, I'm not sure if the controversy that would ensue would be worth any marginal benefit to holding the election that day.

[geminigirl]

The Spanish seemed to manage just fine...

[scherzoid.livejournal.com]

Except the wrong candidate won. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, that is...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Note:
The idea of postponing elections does indeed frankly squick me.

That said, the Spanish having taken Padilla out of office in their post 3/11 election has been pointed at as suspect because it happened so closely after an attack. That people were voting in fear.

Scarily enough, there're a fair number of people who figure an attack would send the election to Bush, just because of the psych peculiarities here ("stay the course!") as opposed to in Spain ("let's get the heck out of the Middle East so these crazies stop attacking us")

[malte.livejournal.com]

Padilla? Maybe you meant Aznar.

Anyway, the interpretation I heard at the time was not that people were 'voting in fear'. They were just heartily pissed off that Aznar did its best to pull the wool over the people's eyes declaring that ETA was behind the attacks before any investigation had been done.

I'm not sure anybody really knows what effect big tragic events have on elections. I'm pretty sure it can go both ways. Putting off elections probably works just about as well for the incumbents as taking them early. Putting them off indefinitely, on the other hand...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I'm working on a really big sleep deficit here; sorry for the confusion.

Yeah. I think I could handle something like "elections will take place no closer than 2 weeks after a devastating attack" but not indefinite postponement.

'course how you define devastating...

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: was this suggested in the sense of "something the evil Republicans might try to pull to implement a coup d'état", or was it presented as a reasonable thing to do?

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

Cheyney said something in an interview recently suggesting that holding the elections was not a sure thing.

[geminigirl]

There's a article about it on Cnn.com at the moment...and I'm sure if I looked harder, I could point you at other information.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Yeah; I've seen the news articles since I posted after. Worrying, to put it lightly.

[jennifer0246.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I'm afraid they'll incite or pull off an attack on their own, if they're down a few percentage points. Then Shrub'll look like a real hero, after leading the country through an attack.

I'm so worried about this country.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I'd say that sounds ludicrous, except that I learned the other day that such things were considered up to the Joint Chiefs level back in the 60's, as a way to justify attacking Cuba.

McNamara was the one to say, "uh... no," but it's kinda disturbint it got to his level.

It was an author interviewed on the Diane Rheam show, but I heard it rebroadcast on Cspan so I'm not sure how to track down the book title.

[xrew.livejournal.com]

Clearly this is another attempt on the part of the Bush administration to retain their illegally gained power in the White House. The elections should go on as planned and we should get Bush (excuse my language here) THE FUCK OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE... NOW!

Bush is the worst thing that has ever happened to this nation in my opinion and threatens the very foundation of a democratic America. The man is an insane religious zealot with delusions of grandeur and should be tried and jailed for his crimes against our nation and the world.

Not only am I not afraid to say so... I'd be happy to lead the FBI agents to his door to arrest him, if they'd let me. :)

[messyjessy.livejournal.com]

If they postpone the elections, I'm moving to Canada. I refuse to live in a country where the current administration can artificially extend their time in office.

[zenmondo.livejournal.com]

Personally I think this is being floated because Diebold told the administration that thier "special software" won't be ready for november...

You know, I thought of the above as a joke, but....

When I heard of this last night, I was so livid....

[wait.livejournal.com]

But but.

Something Might Happen.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

What do we do if, say, eight bombs go off outside polling places in Philadelphia on Election Day? Do we tell Pennsylvanians to suck it up and get their asses to the polls anyway? What if turnout drops dramatically in Philly as a result...

... and then PA goes for Bush? What if PA's votes become the margin of victory in a tight race? Do we say, "Well, if only more Democrats had risked getting blown up at the polls, we'd have run him out of town"?

What happens after that? Do we get "Bush v. Kerry" argued in the Supreme Court on the basis that PA was *supposed* to be a Kerry state? We're all counting on this election to establish a better sense of what the nation really feels (even it's a deeply divided result), and we need to make sure that we have a plan to make sure that the will of the public is really made known.

If that plan is "the affected areas will vote a week later, and we'll keep the earlier results under wraps until everyone has voted", then I'd be OK with that. I think we'll make a better decision if we discuss all the possible contingencies beforehand, though. If our collective decision is "Voting occurs on the designated day, and if you miss it, too fucking bad, we'll see you in four years"... well, I can live with that, too.

Any decision we make while there is smoking rubble in front of a polling place is going to be overly hasty, though.

[papertigers.livejournal.com]

i have no objection to preparing contigency plans to use in the event of actual terrorist attacks at or near election time. what seems to have been suggested, however, is an indefinite postponement of elections because of supposed information on the possibility of terrorism, and that smacks entirely too much of an excuse to extend the Bush administration. i'm very suspicious of these so-called terrorists threats, since they seem to surface conveniently whenever controversial activities are exposed or Bush's popularity seems to be slipping.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where you're getting that, although I would join you in being very alarmed if the facts were anything like that.

Instead, according to Newsweek, the director of the Election Assistance Commission (DeForest Soaries Jr.) wrote to Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Secretary, and expressed concern that there seemed to be no specific body charged with postponing federal elections in the manner that the New York primary scheduled for 9/11/2001 was postponed by the New York Board of Elections. The director suggested that the EAC was the appropriate body to do so, and asked Secretary Ridge to ask Congress to give the EAC that power.

Secretary Ridge kicked the matter over to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel for their opinion, and that's where we stand today.

[winterbadger]

I think people are reacting to this surfacing just after the Ridge announcement of a threat to elections that was entirely vague, apparently not serious enough to change the "emergency color code", and seemingly timed to grab headlines after the Democractic VP candidate choice. Since then, members of Congress who have been briefed on the latest intelligence estimates have said that there is no new activity or planning being reported that would have justified this annoucnement by Ridge. The announcement, supposedly, prompted Soaries, a Bush appointee to a subpanel of the Federal Elections Commission which exists only to oversee federal finaincing of elections and has no purview over the actual running of elections, to suggest that his group be given authority to postpone elections.

It's all too convenient. It's incredibly suspicious. Bush and Cheney have shown themselves time and time again to be fixated only on gaining their own ends, no matter what it takes. In another adminsitration, I might look on this as sensible contingency planning; in this one, it just seems an obvious trial baloon to see how much resistance there would be to an administrative coup.

[onlyblossom.livejournal.com]

i say hold the elections as planned. If we don't the terrorist win and we don't. I hate living in fear but i try not to as i don't want the terrorist to know they have the better of me.

[beetlebau.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that this came out of a session of considering hypothetical scenarios and how to respond to them. Since the al Qaeda supposedly were planning to disrupt the election process, this may have been "leaked" to keep them guessing as to the result of their attack.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

I expected this the day George Bush was elected (or not, depending on which way you look at it).

This is nuts. So let everyone vote absentee for this election, if people are worried.