When Disaster Strikes: The Continuity of Our Elections
October 23, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036

To read a summary of the event, go here.

Successfully managing an ordinary presidential election requires an enormous amount of preparation and planning. But what if the circumstances are anything but ordinary? Natural and man-made disasters alike have caused massive administrative disruptions to elections in recent years in states like Louisiana, with Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, and New York, with the attacks on September 11. Numerous legal questions arise in the face of disaster: If a catastrophe required closing polling places in a specific city or state on Election Day, could that state legally reschedule the federal election? How would the Constitution or federal law handle the incapacitation or death of one or more of the presidential or vice-presidential candidates in a terrorist attack?

Examining these and other questions related to the continuity of elections will be former Louisiana secretary of state Al Ater; Steven Huefner, Associate Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; AEI's Norman J. Ornstein; Leonard Shambon, legal counsel to the clerk of the House of Representatives; and executive director of the Election Assistance Commission and former chair of the New York State Board of Elections Tom Wilkey. AEI's John C. Fortier will moderate.

Moderator:
John C. Fortier, American Enterprise Institute

Panelists:
Al Ater, former secretary of state of Louisiana
Steven Huefner, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University
Norman J. Ornstein, AEI
Leonard Shambon, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
Tom Wilkey, Election Assistance Commission
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Center for American Politics and Citizenship
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