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."There's good reason for that lack of authority | For unlike kingdoms, ours is a democratic republic, the "king" replaced, effectively, by the polity ~the public citizenry | And if you endanger the life of that public, that polity, you have, in essence, endangered the life of "the king" | Individuals entrusted in leadership offices and roles are but symbolic [ubercitizens, perhaps] and the role they play is intended that those in this stead are removable from office | The election process is the manner by which this is conducted | To terminate the process is to, effectively, to willfully subvert expression of the intent and will of the populace | effectively, is then, and Act of Treason... or at the very least, an Act of Sedition |