Pondering An Election Day Delay

By David Paul Kuhn,
CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer

Last week, the chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission wrote the Department of Justice requesting that it interpret who has the legal authority to delay the November election should it become necessary.

"This gives terrorists a new sense of empowerment. It was the wrong thing to do," says Richard Dekmejian, an expert on terrorism and the Middle East at the University of Southern California. "Every step of the way, the Bush administration has been doing this. This is one way to recognize terrorists as a global player. That's the last thing we should do."

It would take an act of Congress to create a body with the power to postpone an American election, as well as amendments to all 50 state constitutions and innumerable municipalities.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, there is concern that terrorists may attempt to strike the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer. In Boston, where Democrats will gather from July 26 to 29, the central rail commuting station will be closed. In New York City, there will be 10,000 police as well as thousands of federal officers on patrol during the Republican convention, August 30 to September 2.

But the concern of the Election Assistance Commission – created in 2002 as a national clearinghouse to review voting procedures – relates to the possibility of an attack, however remote, only days prior to the Nov. 2 election. Homeland Security has warned that al Qaeda may be planning an attack in order to disrupt the U.S. electoral process.

Last week, Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge cited increased "chatter" among al Qaeda-affiliated groups, though he conceded that there was no precise information. Ridge alluded to the March 11 Madrid commuter train bombings as bolstering terrorist ambitions to disrupt the U.S. election. The Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000, occurred three days before Spain's general election and helped propel the underdog Spanish Socialist party to victory. The attacks reversed voter sentiment and the Socialists, who opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, took power. Soon after, Spanish troops withdrew from Iraq.

"The Spanish attack was very instructive in terms of the Western democracy and it showed the incredible potential of timing, in terms of terrorism, to change the electoral outcome," Dekmejian says.

The Transition to Governing Project, a joint undertaking of the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, has been studying a multiplicity of concerns since 2000 related to ensuring a stable transfer of power under any circumstances. The director of the project, Norman Ornstein, welcomed the Department of Justice inquiry.

"At last, months later than they should have, someone is trying to finally pay attention to this problem," Ornstein says. "We have never had to delay a federal election and just because it hasn't happened, that doesn't mean it won't happen."

Neither during the War of 1812, an election year, nor at the height of the Civil War – the gubernatorial election of 1862 and the presidential race of 1864 – did the United States delay an election. Under some pressure to postpone the election in 1864, Abraham Lincoln said, "If the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone, a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered us."

Dekmejian and other terrorism experts have the same concern nearly 150 years later. "The election must go on," if there is an attack, Dekmejian says, because it would "show the world, show terrorists, that the U.S. is powerful enough as a democracy to fight them as well as go on at home, and insure the peaceful and timely transfer of power. This is one of the hallmarks of Democracy."

In modern times, like during World War II, the option of postponing the American election has never been seriously considered. But none of America's previous wars saw a single-day casualty count on U.S. soil to compare with Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people died. Ornstein argues the unprecedented nature of the Sept. 11 attack created the need for unprecedented considerations by the U.S. government.

It is unclear how a large-scale attack akin to Sept. 11, 2001 would affect the November election. Ornstein's best guess is that "it would favor a president in the short term and damage the president in the long term."

But even in the event of another attack, Ornstein argues, "you can't postpone the vote in part of the country and not in the rest of the country. Otherwise, that area will be disenfranchised." He asks: "What if terrorists took out a large share of Cleveland's voting district on Election Day, when Ohio is a swing state?"

"It would have to go forward, because we can not permit external actors to affect the tenor, the life sequence, of American democracy," answers Dekmejian. "Cleary if it does not, it empowers them to do that, it makes them the determining factor in terms of what happens to the electoral system in the world's greatest democracy."

By David Paul Kuhn