Newsweek: Homeland Security Reviewing
Proposal to Postpone Election
Newsweek
| July 19 2004 Issue
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. Justice was specifically asked
to review a recent letter to Ridge from DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman
of the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries noted
that, while a primary election in New York on September 11, 2001, was quickly
suspended by that state's Board of Elections after the attacks that morning,
"the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority
to cancel and reschedule a federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee
who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress, wants
Ridge to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency
to make such a call. Homeland officials say that as drastic as such proposals
sound, they are taking them seriously—along with other possible contingency
plans in the event of an election-eve or Election Day attack. "We are
reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the
election," says Brian Roehrkasse, a Homeland spokesman.
