[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           DO NOT POSTPONE THE NOVEMBER PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, almost 4 years ago, President Bush came 
to the office of the Presidency having lost the popular vote in this 
country by over 500,000 votes, having endured a disputed election in 
Florida, where there were multiple charges and accusations of fraud and 
people being denied the right to vote. We had the involvement of the 
Supreme Court for the first time, I believe, in our Nation's history in 
making a decision basically to stop the counting of votes in Florida. 
And so the President came to office under these very unusual 
circumstances.
  I think all of us, all of the country recognized that there was a 
need for healing in our country, and we hoped that President Bush would 
do what he promised to do during his campaign: that he would be a 
uniter, not a divider; that he would govern as a compassionate 
conservative. But the fact is that President Bush has governed from the 
far right of his party, and he has perhaps been the most divisive 
President in recent history.
  We all know also that on September 11, 2001, our country was attacked 
and all Americans pulled together at that time. It was a time when the 
President had a unique opportunity to mobilize the world in the fight 
against terrorism. But rather than do that, he chose to go his own way, 
to use intelligence data that was inaccurate, I believe exaggerated and 
manipulated, in order to convince the American people that there was a 
threat from Iraq, when we now know that the real threat continues to 
come from al Qaeda and the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, 
who I would remind all of us is free tonight to plot the next attack 
upon our Nation.
  In the last few hours, something has happened that alarms me, and I 
think will alarm the American people as they find out about it. Earlier 
this week, the U.S. Elections Assistant Commissioner, who is a Bush 
appointee, asked the Homeland Security Secretary, Mr. Tom Ridge, to 
consider seeking the authority to postpone a Federal election. As a 
result, the Department of Homeland Security has asked the Justice 
Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze the steps that would be 
needed to postpone the November Presidential election.
  Mr. Speaker, this is an outrage. The postponement of a Presidential 
election would present the greatest threat to date to our democratic 
process. It would be a capitulation to the terrorists, inviting them to 
disrupt the selection of our highest leader, and it would be 
unprecedented for a Presidential election.
  Not even the Civil War stopped the 1864 Presidential election from 
taking place. I quote from Abraham Lincoln, November 10, 1864: 
President Lincoln said, ``We cannot have free government without 
elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a 
national election, it might already fairly claim to have conquered or 
ruined us.''
  In early 1864, President Abraham Lincoln feared that he may lose the 
Presidency because of widespread criticism of his handling of the Civil 
War. No President had won a second term since Andrew Jackson, more than 
30 years prior, and the Union had recently suffered a string of 
military disappointments.

                              {time}  1945

  Under those conditions, many of Lincoln's closest advisers urged him 
to postpone the election so that he could focus on the war effort, but 
Abraham Lincoln never even considered that possibility, nor should we.
  The fight against terrorism, like the Civil War, will affect more 
than a generation of Americans. Let us make sure that in this long 
fight against terrorism we do not lose what we are fighting for in the 
first place. I do not know that this would happen, but I think the 
American people need to be paying attention. Would it be possible that 
shortly before the elections the residing party in power determined 
that things were not going so well, would there be a temptation under 
those circumstances to find some reason to justify postponing the 
election? We should never even consider such a possibility. I call upon 
the President to reject this suggestion, and I call upon this Congress 
to stand together as Republicans and Democrats to say we are having our 
Presidential election on November 2, regardless of what the terrorists 
may seek to do.

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