I know E2 isn't setup to respond to noders and nodes, but I will post this daylog as my thoughts about TheCustodian and the discussions about what happens if there is a terrorist attack at/during election time.
Think it through this way. Let say there is an event in a major city, it disruptes power, communication, ways to get to voting booths, etc. How do you deal with the people that did not get an opportunity to vote? How do you know if the voting machines were moved due to the emergency were not tampered with or fixed? Do you let one location vote on the next day? The day when everything is fixed? Who decides?
Lets follow this situation out further. If it is another close election like last year, how do you deal with all of the problems? If the electoral vote and not the popular vote is the deciding factor in the election, we will then have to deal with another round of lawsuites, hanging chads, and other crap that makes our election system look like a joke. If the John Kerry wins the now "disputed" election, will the Repubilicans react the same way as the Democrats did in 2000?
Better yet, will anyone care about the election? The last I heard was there were multiple attacks being planned for election time once again trying to cause the most damage possible. So these attaccks happen, we, as Americans, beome glued to cable news and all we want to know is did our love ones make it? Who all died, are there more comming? I for one won't care what states vote for who and by how many votes person X won vs person Y.
Is this idea a problem because of who is in office and not that this might be a possible solution? If it wasn't Bush, would people be making comparisons (again) to Hitler and things he tried? Let's say Kerry was President and this decision was made, would people be discussing it as much as they are now? I don't know but I hope so.
Remember this is nothing but a plan in case of a major terrorist attack like September 11th.