Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Postpone elections? No way

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One of President Bush’s obscure appointees apparently is the only Washington official willing to challenge the patriotic slogan, "American colors don’t run."

DeForest Soaries, Jr., a New Jersey minister who chairs the U.S. Election Commission, frets that the nation has no plan for postponing national elections if faced with terrorism.

What could this man have been thinking when he asked the Homeland Security Department to study a mechanism for delaying the election if terrorists attacked?

The answer that seems to be on everyone’s lips is "Forget it, pal, we hold the elections."

On only two other occasions when the question was raised seriously, President Abraham Lincoln rejected delaying the election in the Civil War and President Franklin Roosevelt nixed any such notion in World War II.

And why not? Elections are the bedrock of the American democracy—the premiere mechanism allowing Americans to freely choose their leaders from the small hamlet to the presidency and thereupon perpetuate democratic governance.

Postponing November’s election under any circumstance would be an absolute concession that terrorists could paralyze national life with a barbaric threat or planting a random killer bomb. How would Americans look in Third World countries, where elections are held despite threats of rebels?

Some 291 million Americans live between the coasts and in 3.5 million square miles. The 3,066 counties responsible for elections range in size from Arlington County, Va.’s, 60 square miles to North Slope Borough, Alaska’s 200,000 square miles, and from Loving County, Texas’s, 140 residents to Los Angeles County’s 9.2 million people.

What terrorist army could possibly inflict mortal wounds on a nation that large and people so widely scattered and so committed to casting their votes?

Soaries apparently believes the bombing of a Spanish train changed the election outcome. It didn’t occur to him that maybe Spaniards simply were tired of the incumbent prime minister and voted him out.

Some humor is emerging from the silliness of postponing elections.

Some wags are saying the only terrorist threat in November is from two Democratic guys named John Kerry and John Edwards.

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