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Subscribe to RSSCould the vast disruption caused by Sandy prompt a delay in the Nov. 6 presidential election? Voting may be extensively disrupted in some of the swing states, including Virginia and Ohio.
MSNBC's Chris Jansing talks with NBC's Pete Williams about the impact Superstorm Sandy may have on the election, and the issues that would surround a possible postponement of the presidential election.
The answer is, yes, it could undoubtedly be delayed. But it almost certainly won't be.
The Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish the day for presidential elections, and since 1845, a federal law has set the date as "the Tuesday after the first Monday in November." Congress could change the date, just as it could change any federal statute. But it would have to act quickly.
And of course, it's the states, not the federal government, that run elections in America. Many states in areas not affected by Sandy's wrath would be likely to oppose a delay and its attendant costs. They could choose to go ahead with their elections for all but president and have a separate election for president later. But such a move would undoubtedly suppress the turnout.
Past disasters, including weather emergencies, have forced postponement of state and local elections. New York state suspended its primary election in 2001 -- on September 11th, the day of the suicide hijack attacks. But few states have a regular procedure for doing it. Florida, with its long experience in dealing with hurricanes, is one of the few with specific procedures in place, allowing the governor to suspend or delay elections.
Andrew Burton / Getty Images
Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.
John Fortier, a nationally respected expert on presidential elections, points out additional problems, writing on a blog sponsored by the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University.
"If voting were disrupted and postponed in one state," Fortier says, "then we will likely know the results in all the other states before voting can resume in the affected state. If the affected state or states are determinative of the electoral college outcome, the pressure and focus on that one state would be enormous."
Among other questions, he says, are what to do with votes already cast.
Finally, consider the fact that never before the U.S. history has a presidential election been postponed or canceled, not even during the Civil War.
Reuters, Getty Images
In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.
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You keep hearing the left wing news media report how the polls are showing this race to go down tot he wire. But there is a new Gallup poll that conveniently isn't being reported. It's a poll of the early voters. This early voter poll shows Romney with a 52% - 47% lead. Now that is one poll that is trust worthy!
The question is why do the left wing media outlets not report figures that show Obama to be loosing?
Oh, I know, I know! (Visualize the jumping up and down with hand in the air)
Gallup conducts a National Poll. having a Huge lead in a Red state like Georgia does not mean the state of OH or WI will vote the same way.
Any polls that make Romney numbers look better than what they are, you silly idiots post comments about it.
I sure hope all you idiots come on FR next wednesday.
State by State Poll are the one's that matter at this point. OH looking good for Obama, Iowa looking good for Obama, WI still in Obama camps. Those 3 states gives him 270 and more. Period. 3 states,
The national polls usually show the direction of the swing states which historically follow suit, hence the name 'swing states'. The national poll points to the trend! Doubtful that Ohio is more than 2 or 3 points from the national!! Sorry for the inconvienient truth dems!
keep dreaming looser, I'm not going to waste my time talking to you because you don't know anything about how Poll are conducted especially State by State Polls. You got 7 more days and then you will become irrelvant just like nibor, Ticked, no bo, no jo and the rest of the right wing gang.
BTW, National Polls show an "average of all states Polling data". AVERAGE OF ALL STATES. It does not show the direction of 1 particular State. Get real buddy..
"Debbie-525743
CantAfford,
Mitt Romney's answer to students.
"Borrow money from your parents"
This is the same Mitt Romney who said Detroit should get private financing when there was none available. Every expert, including thousands of former Republicans said Mitt Romney's approach would have destroyed millions of US jobs. It would have taken 2-4 years to go through the privately funded bankruptcy (if there was money available) that Mitt Romney wanted. That's 2-4 years of GM and Chrysler workers without jobs."
Debbie-525743- I guess you don't read much.. Jeep is taking production over to China.. We bailed them out and they are bailing on us.. crawl back under your rock..
Living here on the NC coast tropical storms/hurricanes are almost an annual occurance. Their not a lot of fun, but the media definetly plays it up BIG TIME!! Having watched the HUGE influx of yellow lisence plates (and the obnoxious mouths to go with them) for the last ten yrs. or so, we are not too fond of the yankee infiltration that has occured here. We call the retirees 'halfbackers', because they retire to Fla. realize its too hot, and only move half back. The rest are just obnoxious'damn yankees'!! That being said, "YOU'SE GUYS" have fu@&'in fun with that wata' up there!! Couldnt have happened in a betta place!! okay Im gonna "get the f@#k outta heeea!! Enjoy yankees, heee!!
LIE, Obamacare will bankrupt the nation. (AP 10/22/12) Kaiser Family Foundation: six out of 10 recipients will pay higher premiums under Romneycare, $200/mo more for Florida Medicare. Watch out Seniors, don’t get SHAFTED.
This is the reality of Obama's economic policies in his own words. If you can't trust these Obama words when they proved to be accurate, then how can you support him because he's either lying to you now or he lied when he made this speech and in either case that makes him nothing but a political whore that is incapable of leadership.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance
from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.
And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.
Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America's priorities. Instead,
interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans–a debt tax that Washington doesn't want to talk
about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.
Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.
Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., (Senate – March 16, 2006)
Since all the right wing idiots posting comments about what Gallup says, I guess I'll show a Poll that show a different race from what Gallup is saying.
In the crucial swing state of OH, which Gallup says nothing about because they conduct Nation Wide Polls.
CNN Poll of likely voters in OH Obama 50 to Romney 46.
CNN only polled likely Democrat voters and got 50/46. Unclear if it also includes illegals, foreign nationals, and Hugo Chavez.
Really, and how do you know they only Polled Likely Democrate. Proof please...
CNN polled Hugo Chavez, you really are stupid for real.
Obama has been endorsed by Chavez, Castro, Putin and now Jason.
In other news: Hurricane related power outage hampers book cooking at the BLS kitchens. Obama considers extending hurricane until November 7 to allow BLS time to properly process selected states.
"nibor" said
CNN only polled likely Democrat voters and got 50/46. Unclear if it also includes illegals, foreign nationals, and Hugo Chavez.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
That has to be the dumbest post I ever seen on FR. This person listen to Rush to much in the day or just outright stupid as hell.
My vote is for option number two.
Jumping back and forth between cable news networks all day; CNN and FOX were covering the storm, but MSNBC managed to continue their assault on the Romney campaign; talk about desperation
You clearly didn't watch Megyn Kelly.
"Storm aftermath not likely to delay election"
I don't think even the communist in the White House has the nerve to delay the elections.
Updated as of 8:00pm EST on Tuesday, October 30:
Real Clear Politics (RCP) is consistently cited by both FOXNEWS and NBCNEWS as a current source for reliable averaged polling data at every level of American politics.
RCP continues to consider the following eleven states, listed in descending order of electoral votes, as "toss-up": Florida (FL), Pennsylvania (PA), Ohio (OH), Michigan (MI), North Carolina (NC),Virginia (VA), Colorado
(CO), Wisconsin (WI), Iowa IO), Nevada (NV) and New Hampshire (NH).
With only 148 hours left in the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama leads in seven of the toss-ups, Romney leads in two, and in CO and VA as of Saturday the candidates are now tied.
In descending order of 'percentage of lead' in favor of Obama, followed in ascending order of 'percentage of lead' in favor of Romney, here are the published averaged numbers from RCP as of 8:00pm EST today together with the FiveThirtyEight election night probability of victory for either candidate:
.
In PA, with 20 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 4.7%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 94.2% chance of winning PA.
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In MI, with 16 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 4.0%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 98.1% chance of winning MI.
.
In NV, with 6 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.4%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 79.7% chance of winning NV.
.
In WI, with 10 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.3%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama an 85.7% chance of winning WI.
.
In OH, with 18 electoral votes, Obama's lead has risen to 2.1%, up from yesterday's 1.9%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 73.3% chance of winning OH.
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In NH, with 4 electoral votes, Obama's lead is holding at 2.0%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 70.3% chance of winning NH.
.
In IO, with 6 electoral votes, Obama's lead has fallen to 1.0%, down significantly from yesterday's 2.3%.
However, at present FiveThirtyEight continues to give Obama a 70.9% chance of winning IO.
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In VA, with 13 electoral votes, the race remains tied.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 57.8% chance of winning VA.
.
In CO, with 9 electoral votes, the race remains tied.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Obama a 55.4% chance of winning CO.
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In FL, with 29 electoral votes, Romney's lead has fallen to 1.3%, down from yesterday's 1.4%.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Romney a 64.7% chance of winning FL.
.
In NC, with 15 electoral votes, Romney's lead has risen to 3.3%, up from yesterday's 3.0%.
FiveThirtyEight gives Romney an 81.4% chance of winning NC.
.
For Obama to win re-election, the least complex route appears to be through maintaining his current lead in the five toss-up states where his existing margins are widest, PA, MI, NV, WI, and OH. Doing so would bring his electoral vote total on Election Day to 271. In this scenario, Obama could still surpass 270 while failing to hold either IO or NH.
However, should Obama fail to hold OH, the loss could effectively be neutralized by any of the following combination of wins from states where FiveThirtyEight is currently predicting Obama victories:
Path #1: Obama loses OH but wins IO, NH, and CO resulting in 272 electoral votes.
Path #2: Obama loses OH but wins VA and either IO or NH resulting in 272 or 270 electoral votes, respectively.
Path #3: Obama loses OH but wins CO and VA resulting in 275 electoral votes.
However, regarding Path #1, there is some question as to the accuracy of the RCP polling numbers in NH which still include in their average a recent 'outlier' finding from UNH which had Obama leading by a questionable 9.0%.
For Romney to unseat Obama, he not only would have to hold the two states in which he presently leads, FL and NC, bringing his electoral vote total to 235, but also steal victories in CO where his lead fell from 0.4% on Friday to that of dead heat, in VA where his lead fell from 1.0% on Saturday to another dead heat, and finally with OH where Obama's lead this evening rose to 2.1%. By so doing, Romney's electoral vote total would reach 275.
Should Romney take CO and VA but fail to take OH, he could overcome this shortfall by stealing WI and either IO or NH, resulting respectively in an electoral vote total of 273 or 271.
FiveThirtyEight, at present, estimates the chance of Election Day victory for each candidate as follows: Obama 72.9% - Romney 27.1%. FiveThirtyEight also projects that on Election Day the final electoral tally will be as
follows: Obama 295 -Romney 243. Lastly, although it makes no difference in terms of the final result which can only be determined by the Electoral College, FiveThirtyEight currently predicts a national popular vote
distribution on Election Day as follows: Obama 50.3% - Romney 48.8%.
With only 148 hours of campaigning left, this one will come down to the wire….and to the October jobs report which because of Hurricane Sandy may be delayed from a scheduled Friday release to the following Monday,
one day before the election.
Let's hope that Election Day is free of both voter fraud and voter intimidation and that eligible voters who have registered in good faith over the past six months are in fact able to vote on November 6; let's also hope that vote tabulation itself is performed honestly and accurately by both the election commissions and private corporations to whom this essential role is being entrusted.
In any case, it will be interesting to watch as election night unfolds.
Both candidates should visit Guantanamo, Cuba, and the Gitmo Prison to assess the damage after Hurricane Sandy. I don't think any one in New Jersey is waiting for them to stop by. The loss of the HMS Bounty was a tragedy. Captain Bligh and Mister Christian might have swam, swum?, ashore, or worse, the Bounty was hauling slaves. What was it doing out there?