POLITICS: House Votes Against Postponement of Elections

House Resolution 728: The House passed a bill recently expressing their view that no terrorist attack would postpone the election. As well, the bill stated that no single agency or individual should be given the power to do such. The bill was passed by a vote of 419-2.



Seems the House is fighting this, still no word on how this is playing out in the Senate... Good to know the House is on our side to such an overwhelming extent. I recommend checking out the house.gov website often and clicking on Currently on the House Floor to see whats going on in the House. Recently, the DoD budget was passed, an iniative to protect aircraft from terrorism/military, and a special budget for Department of Transportation for researching.

[edit on 27-7-2004 by Jamuhn]

[edit on 27-7-2004 by John bull 1]

I'm glad they oppose the idea of postponing the election. Why does the House want to fight this? What if they know something to later on say they didn't know a thing? Kinda seems like this government is starting to fall apart.

The two ashhats who voted against the resolution were Reps. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and Scott McInnis, R-Colo. I wonder why.

Also thirteen chicken poops didn't vote on the measure.

Yea, I'd like to think the House is a lot more powerful than we'd like to think. It's good to see some real democracy in action. I wonder though if this will prevent the postponement of the elections or if its merely a recommendation to the executive power.

It's pretty simple, I think. It's the House saying, "uh no you don't!" to the idea that say the Secretary of Homeland Security or whoever could unilaterally postpone or change elections.

It doesn't meant that it wouldn't necessarily happen, but it would take, literally, an act of Congress to do so.

It's a good idea, your Constitution at work. Congress has authority to determine the manner and time of the presidential elections, and the states have the authority to determine the details of the voting of their electors, and the Constitution has authority over the numbers of electors per state.

Obviously an incumbent president could be perceived as having substantial interest in modifying the time of elections---say as in Parlimentary systems when the government in power can call a snap election when it thinks its time is right (i.e. high in the polls).

The authors of the Constitution, rightly, thought that was a bad idea. I agree---it is one less political issue that people can whine about here.