From: Benjamin Greenberg
Date: Tue Jul 13, 2004 1:21:50 PM US/Eastern
To: HAVAinfo@eac.gov
Subject: preserve democracy: don't postpone elections
I urge you to make today's discussion of provisions to cancel US elections in the event of terrorism the last such discussion by the US Election Assistance Commission.
The current discussion concerning guidelines for canceling or postponing US elections is a bad idea, without precedent in the history of the Unites States. In no past war and in no past catastrophic event has our country ever postponed democracy.
We live in a time of legitimately heightened fears regarding terrorism within our United States borders. If we make provisions for canceling elections, fear may cause hasty, irreversible actions that will make a mockery of our democracy.
I believe your energies would be better spent devising ways to insure that there is no repeat of the disenfranchisement of 1,000,000 African-American voters, as there was in the 2000 presidential election. If there is a crisis the EAC must avert, it is surely this one, in which grossly disproportionate numbers of African-American votes do not count—a crisis which has already occurred and which is all too likely to occur again unless the EAC and other governmental bodies take immediate action.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Thomas Greenberg
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