The Autopen

 

An issue has appeared in the national press after the

 Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project

 discovered that many of the papers that needed the signature

 of the ex-president had been made with an autopen. The auto

pen is a device that’s meant to imitate the signature of an

 individual on important documents. It’s needed because

 important elected officials, bureaucrats and management

 figures just don’t have the time to graphically approve them.

 A machine does it instead.

In the case of a particular ex-president it seems that he may

 not have had the mental capacity to understand the issues

 that his signature was meant to approve. It’s suspected that

 the autopen was used by those surrounding him with their

 own ideas.

An on-line publication by the American Association of Notaries

 illustrates the problems that can arise in such a situation and

 how they are handled professionally. This is not to say that a

 similar process wasn’t followed in the case of the signatures

 by the ex-president. He was no doubt surrounded by

 attorneys giving him advice. At the same time, the general 

public should be aware that the man with the nuclear football

 is incapable, for one reason or another, of approving or 

initiating government policy and action.

While there will be many who say, “It’s just the way things are

 done now”. there will be many others that will consider the

 process fraudulent, further dividing the country pretty much

 along the same lines as at present. The auto pen should be

 forbidden in any part of government.

 

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