Postponing this year’s presidential election — it’s not just for the tin-foil hat and black-helicopter crowds anymore. It’s actually gone mainstream.
This is, to be sure, the kind of thing that makes most of us nervous. Wait, make that “hyperventilate.” In my heart of hearts, even I have found it hard to imagine the Bush gang postponing a presidential election. And yet, the discussion is, at a minimum, seems to be on the table.
American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call “alarming” intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, Newsweek has learned.
The prospect that Al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week’s terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March’s Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections — as well as intercepted “chatter” among Qaeda operatives — has led analysts to conclude “they want to interfere with the elections,” says one official.
As a result, sources tell Newsweek, Ridge’s department last week asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place.
The fact that the administration is even thinking about such plans is troubling. Naturally, the right is accusing us of overreacting and noting that the discussion is just about a contingency plan in the event a real emergency, not a plan to make Bush supreme dictator for life. Fine. But, in all sincerity, just imagine for a moment the conservatives’ reaction if Clinton cabinet agencies were thinking out loud about such a plan. Calm, reasoned discourse about what to do in a crisis would hardly rule the day.
There are plenty of reasons to believe this is an academic exercise with no basis (or applicability) in reality. For example, does recent intelligence really suggest that al Queda wants to interfere with the elections? Apparently not.
A Democratic congressman who receives classified briefings on the threat of terrorist attacks said yesterday that top U.S. government officials’ repeated statements that international terrorists want to disrupt the American electoral process this year “appear to have no basis.”
Rep. Jim Turner (Tex.), ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that after several recent briefings by U.S. intelligence officials about perceived terrorist threats this summer and fall, “I don’t have any information that al Qaeda” plans to attack the election process. “Nobody knows anything about timing” or the exact nature of any possible attack, although U.S. officials say al Qaeda wants to mount an attack this year, Turner said.
Putting aside whether such an attack may occur, it’s difficult to put aside politics and skepticism in dealing with the substance of the question: how, and under what conditions, should elections be postponed? Most of us can’t even get to that question because the Bush administration has made it impossible to suspend our doubt about their motivations.
This White House has demonstrated that, as far they’re concerned, anything goes. No exploitation is too crass, no manipulation is too dishonest, no smear is too scurrilous, no abuse is too opportunistic. When these same people raise the specter of postponing a presidential election for the first time in U.S. history, are we just supposed to bite our tongues and expect them to act in good faith? Sorry; no can do.
Frankly, I can imagine a nightmare scenario by which a brief postponement may make sense. If a 9/11-style attack were launched on several U.S. cities, just hours before voters were to go to the polls, is it unreasonable to think the election should be put off temporarily? I don’t think it is.
That said, the administration’s approach, such as it is, seems terribly flawed. The now-famous Newsweek scoop on this explained that the chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, DeForest B. Soaries Jr., wants Congress to empower his agency to make the call about whether the elections are postponed.
I’m all for thinking ahead — failing to plan is planning to fail — but this is hardly the best approach. A new and largely unknown agency, led by a partisan Bush ally who few have ever heard of, would have the power to decide whether to hold a presidential election in the midst of a national crisis? I don’t think so.
I think Kevin Drum is on the right track.
And even if we do need it, should it be in the hands of a commission? There’s not really any other choice, since Congress isn’t in session during elections, but if we do create such a commission I’d want it to be nice and big and incredibly multi-partisan. And I’d want any decision to reschedule an election to be unanimous.
Congress wouldn’t be in session in early November, but it is in session now. It’s not unreasonable for lawmakers to take up this crisis scenario and decide what would or wouldn’t happen. Under no circumstances should the decision be in the hands of an administration with a vested interest in the election’s outcome.