![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not panicking, but wondering
Jul. 11th, 2004 10:49 pmHm. I’ve been doing a bit of research about Election Day.
See, some of my friends are shitting bricks over this news story about how the Bush administration is looking for the authority to cancel and reschedule the election in case of a terrorist attack.
My first thought was “Good, that needs to be worked out ahead of time.” I figured that the day of the election was established in the US Constitution, and there weren’t any contingency plans for rescheduling in case of nation-wide disaster on Election Day, so if we ever did have such a disaster it’d trigger a constitutional crisis. And it’s not like Bush wants to cancel the election. Steal it, sure, but he wants to have a public event that looks like a regular election, so that he can claim to have public support and legitimacy. Canceling an election would not go down at all well with his conservative base, and the Supreme Court would most likely skin him alive for it.
So I was hunting through the Constitution, word-searching for “november” and “tuesday” and not finding them. Eventually Google found me an FEC Election Day FAQ, and I learned that Election Day is established through the US Code, not the Constitution. Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 1 says: “The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President”. Other sections establish this for Reps and Senators.
But here’s the thing — the next section says what happens if a state doesn’t choose its electors on that day: “Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct”. I’m not sure exactly what that’s about — the election is held but electors aren’t chosen? And Section 5 also looks relevant. But it looks to me like the issue of coping with an attack on Election Day — whether to cancel, when to reschedule — is properly a matter for the states, not the federal government, though maybe Congress gets some say. Trying to bundle this power into the Department of Homeland Security looks like a typical GOP imperial-executive power grab. A responsible thing to do would be to encourage all the state legislatures to come up with contingency plans, to make sure there isn’t a last-minute crisis.
Hmm. The paranoid cynic in me wonders about state governments having the power to delay federal elections. Imagine this: One state, one of the states that gets no attention from candidates during the actual campaign season suffers a terrorist attack on Election Day, the governor says “OK, election’s off for today, we’ll hold it again in two weeks.” (NYC did this with the 2001 mayoral primary, which was originally scheduled for Sept 11.) The rest of the states come out in an electoral tie, and so this one delayed state holds the deciding vote. Suddenly this ignored state is near and dear to both candidates. Two weeks of very intense courtship take place. Promises of all kinds of goodies, the sort of thing the state would normally never get.
Four years later, a bunch more governors and state legislatures start thinking that their states aren’t getting enough attention during the campaign season. “If only we had a terrorist attack on Election Day,” they start thinking....
See, some of my friends are shitting bricks over this news story about how the Bush administration is looking for the authority to cancel and reschedule the election in case of a terrorist attack.
My first thought was “Good, that needs to be worked out ahead of time.” I figured that the day of the election was established in the US Constitution, and there weren’t any contingency plans for rescheduling in case of nation-wide disaster on Election Day, so if we ever did have such a disaster it’d trigger a constitutional crisis. And it’s not like Bush wants to cancel the election. Steal it, sure, but he wants to have a public event that looks like a regular election, so that he can claim to have public support and legitimacy. Canceling an election would not go down at all well with his conservative base, and the Supreme Court would most likely skin him alive for it.
So I was hunting through the Constitution, word-searching for “november” and “tuesday” and not finding them. Eventually Google found me an FEC Election Day FAQ, and I learned that Election Day is established through the US Code, not the Constitution. Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 1 says: “The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President”. Other sections establish this for Reps and Senators.
But here’s the thing — the next section says what happens if a state doesn’t choose its electors on that day: “Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct”. I’m not sure exactly what that’s about — the election is held but electors aren’t chosen? And Section 5 also looks relevant. But it looks to me like the issue of coping with an attack on Election Day — whether to cancel, when to reschedule — is properly a matter for the states, not the federal government, though maybe Congress gets some say. Trying to bundle this power into the Department of Homeland Security looks like a typical GOP imperial-executive power grab. A responsible thing to do would be to encourage all the state legislatures to come up with contingency plans, to make sure there isn’t a last-minute crisis.
Hmm. The paranoid cynic in me wonders about state governments having the power to delay federal elections. Imagine this: One state, one of the states that gets no attention from candidates during the actual campaign season suffers a terrorist attack on Election Day, the governor says “OK, election’s off for today, we’ll hold it again in two weeks.” (NYC did this with the 2001 mayoral primary, which was originally scheduled for Sept 11.) The rest of the states come out in an electoral tie, and so this one delayed state holds the deciding vote. Suddenly this ignored state is near and dear to both candidates. Two weeks of very intense courtship take place. Promises of all kinds of goodies, the sort of thing the state would normally never get.
Four years later, a bunch more governors and state legislatures start thinking that their states aren’t getting enough attention during the campaign season. “If only we had a terrorist attack on Election Day,” they start thinking....