Obama speaks: 'people, due to the extent of damage from [insert event], the election is cancelled'

[Jonathan_Chance]

No, really more a steady state thing.

We’re REALLY be through the looking glass when Mark Warner is the 2016 nominee and people start saying he’s actually Obama after mucho plastic surgery to change his appearance. The other guy was just an actor filling in.

WHY WON’T HE SUBMIT TO A DNA TEST? WHY?

[Saint_Cad]

@GreasyJack

I would imagine that what would be more likely than cancelling the elections outright would be to have all the other states go ahead and vote and allow the affected states a couple of weeks to get reorganized.

As much as I dislike the electoral college, I suppose it could come in handy here too-- if things were really bad, the state could just allow the electors to vote whichever way they thought things were going to go. It would be a very unideal situation, but at least in the Cascadia scenario, there probably wouldn’t be much doubt as to which way that was. Unless things were so bad that people in the liberal west half of those states no longer outnumbered those in the east…

One thing about the Bush/Gore debacle was that the Fla Legislature passed a bill after the election that would appoint the electors if the election was not certified in time. However, this sort of escape clause has to be a law BEFORE the election to be legal.

[Lemur866]

@Little_Nemo

I expected this eventually but I’ll admit it catches me by surprise this year.

Why the hell would Obama cancel an election he’s probably going to win legally? And even if you think Obama’s going to lose and you’re the kind of conspiracy nut who believes this sort of nonsense, wouldn’t it make more sense for Obama to hold the election and then fix the outcome rather than cancel the election?

Or is this just a practice run for the kind of lunacy we’ll be hearing in 2016?

This is exactly right. When we get fascism in America, the fascists aren’t going to cancel elections, they’re going to hold sham elections. It is a rare authoritarian government that never holds rubber-stamp kangaroo elections.

Cancelling elections and openly declaring dictatorial rule doesn’t make any sense. And that goes triple if you’re already in power.

[Smapti]

@Bricker

What I find hilarious is the repetition of this request. I registered here in 1999, and don’t recall any such questions about the Bush-Gore election being cancelled. But Bush was going to cancel the '04 and '08 elections, as well as the midterms in '02 and '06, and now Obama is going to cancel the '12.

It’s as though the past 213 years of cancel-free elections had never happened.

As I recall, Clinton was going to use “y2k” as a justification for cancelling elections.

[Chimera]

@Jonathan_Chance

There is zero chance of this happening and it grows a bit tiresome to answer the question every few years. It doesn’t even matter who is in power this pops right up.

Exactly. This shit is exceedingly old.

[Bricker]

@Saint_Cad

One thing about the Bush/Gore debacle was that the Fla Legislature passed a bill after the election that would appoint the electors if the election was not certified in time. However, this sort of escape clause has to be a law BEFORE the election to be legal.

It’s absolutely correct to say that a law of this type must be passed before the election to be valid.

I don’t remember Florida passing any such law during the 2000 election debacle.

[Nametag]

@Bricker

Good point. We fell victim to one of the classic blunders. Never go up against a Kenyan, when DEATH is on the line.

No, that’s Sicilians. Never go up against a Kenyan when the line is 26 miles away.

And, of course, don’t march on Moscow.

[Diceman]

@Lemur866

This is exactly right. When we get fascism in America, the fascists aren’t going to cancel elections, they’re going to hold sham elections. It is a rare authoritarian government that never holds rubber-stamp kangaroo elections.

Cancelling elections and openly declaring dictatorial rule doesn’t make any sense. And that goes triple if you’re already in power.

Sadly, this is true. If you look around the world at the various pseudo-democracies in places like Africa and SE Asia, you’ll notice that they all have elections. And everybody knows damn well that the party in power is going to win those elections, despite the fact that they are exceedingly unpopular.

[dtilque]

@Smapti

As I recall, Clinton was going to use “y2k” as a justification for cancelling elections.

That would have been during 1999. When Y2K turned out to be a nonevent, we started getting threads about how Clinton was going to run as Gore’s VP with the arrangement for Gore to resign in his favor. And no matter how many times we told people the Constitution doesn’t allow that kind of end run, the threads kept coming back, at least once every month, I think.

[Quartz]

@Jonathan_Chance

Election’s happened during the Civil War

I’m going to bite on this: how did Unionists stuck in the south manage to vote during the Civil War?

[benbo1]

internet?

[Diceman]

@clairobscur

It wasn’t zero. I remember threads with concerned posters.

Oh trust me, it was way, WAY above zero.

[Arkcon]

@Bricker

What I find hilarious is the repetition of this request. I registered here in 1999, and don’t recall any such questions about the Bush-Gore election being cancelled. But Bush was going to cancel the '04 and '08 elections, as well as the midterms in '02 and '06, and now Obama is going to cancel the '12.

It’s as though the past 213 years of cancel-free elections had never happened.

I recall an article in some random men’s magazine that some right-wing millionaire was very worried that Bill Clinton would cancel the election due to some real significant (or supposedly significant) Y2K event.