I'm a little surprised this is still getting play. I heard the head of the Federal Election Commission say that they realized they needed to know if there was a contingency plan for them to do their job, so they asked Tom Ridge. Ridge said there wasn't one and in the course of the conversation realized no one knew who in the Federal government would be responsible for things if a disaster happened near or during the disaster. Ridge called Ashcroft (who's responsible for providing this kind of legal opinion to the government) who said that the Federal government had no power to intervene even if a disaster of some that affected the election kind occurred. Nothing can legally be done the way the laws are now even if it makes sense.

I know you guys want to believe the Republicans are going to delay the election, but this all came about because someone wondered if there was a contingency plan. I'm not sure how having a contingency plan, particularly one we all get to argue about in advance, would be a bad thing. Do you? Would you rather have officials making it up on the fly? That wouldn't give me more confidence at all.