# Can elections be postponed in a national emergency?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-elections-be-postponed-in-a-national-emergency/166081
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 2, 2003, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-elections-be-postponed-in-a-national-emergency/166081 "2003-04-02T23:54:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 13

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### Author: ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-elections-be-postponed-in-a-national-emergency/166081/13 "2003-04-03T04:30:41Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by brianmelendez \*  
> But a president who ordered an election postponed or canceled probably couldn’t make it stick in any case. Not only is there no constitutional or statutory authority for such a presidential action, no part of the electoral machinery is in the hands of the president or his or her subordinates.

It’s true that a President saying “the election is cancelled” has no weight of law, but we can postulate a worst-case scenario where a bonkers President starts dispatching federal troops to bust up polling stations and whatnot. Those sorts of shenangians have happened in plenty of places, though I personally doubt the U.S. could ever get that far.

Reading some of the Pit threads about Bush and Rumsfeld suggests quite a few SDMB members feel otherwise.

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