There are two intriguing issues here. One if the silliness of the actual
wartime contingency planning and its bizarre consequences. The other is the
symbolic point that someone is trying to make about making overseas voting
easier - and the success that they had at getting this provision through.
If fax and email voting are secure when the congress has been attacked, why
not in peacetime? Anyone have insights into who is behind this and what
they are trying to achieve?
Meanwhile, here is my understanding of how nutty the provisions would be as
applied to the emergency election in California. Under CA law, anyone in the
world could ask for a voter application 14 days before the election and then
use the federal backup ballot to write-in a candidate. The new voter then
would have until 31 days after the polls close to cast his vote. CA doesn't
require documentation of citizenship and without even a prior signature,
these ballots would be impossible to challenge. The system normally relies
on post-election criminal enforcement against non-citizens and fictitious
absentee voters, but that isn't much of a deterrent to people hiding behind
fax machines overseas in the middle of a war.
So Al Qaida would have 35 days (49-14) after the successful attack to
organize real or fictitious persons around the world to write-in its
candidates and/or to change the outcome of close elections. And there would
be 31 days (45-14) after the election when the mere possibility of
outstanding ballots would prevent the SoS from certifying winners in any CA
congressional district.
I guess this means some congressmen really like overseas fax voting - and
got a majority of their colleagues to go along with the symbolic point.
Scott Rafferty
4730 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington DC 20016
202-966-0808
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Richardson [mailto:ballotaccessproject@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 11:29 AM
To: rafferty@gmail.com; election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Cc: tess@stanfordalumni.org; edwin.lau@noos.fr
Subject: RE: Overseas Voters in a Post-Attack Election
Scott raises some legitimate questions about the new emergency Congressional
elections law. The answer to the "legislative history" is similar to the
Patriot Act. A mad rush to pass something to combat terrorism without
proper hearings, debate, and public input. There is plenty of need for
federal statutes governing federal elections, however, this is not a good
example of deliberative legislative wisdom.
Michael Richardson
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