Wednesday, December 14, 2016

The logistics

I'm all for giving electors a national security briefing before they vote, but as a practical matter is that proposal something that can be done before Monday's vote? How do you set up a confidential briefing for 538 people scattered across the U.S. and to do all of them in the next four days? How many people do the security agencies have who are qualified to give these kinds of briefings? In a normal course of events, the most these agencies would be expected to deliver three of these briefings at around the same time, which is what they would do during a late presidential campaign when both major party candidates are entitled to a briefing, as well as the sitting president. It would be no simple matter for them to suddenly give each elector a temporary security clearance, then schedule, and then deliver an individual briefings for 180 times as many people in such a short period of time.

I would guess that if whoever is in charge of these things had to do it, they would be able to pull it off, but this would be a real logistical challenge.