Benjy Sarlin May 27, 2011, 3:42 PM

President Obama’s use of a mechanical “autopen” to sign the new PATRIOT Act extension from abroad has at least one Republican lawmaker worried about a “dangerous precedent.” According to Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA), using a machine to sign legislation could one day bring about a dystopia in which robotic writing utensils are used to enact all manner of phony legislation.

“I thought it was a joke at first, but the President did, in fact, authorize an autopen to sign the Patriot Act extension into law,” Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) said in a statement. “Consider the dangerous precedent this sets. Any number of circumstances could arise in the future where the public could question whether or not the president authorized the use of an autopen. For example, if the president is hospitalized and not fully alert, can a group of aggressive Cabinet members interpret a wink or a squeeze of the hand as approval of an autopen signing? I am very concerned about what this means for future presidential orders, whether they be signing bills into law, military orders, or executive orders.”

Graves has written a letter to the White House requesting further details on the process, such as whether Obama saw the PATRIOT Act bill before he signed it. The use of the “autopen” was deemed Constitutional by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2005, but former press secretary Ari Fleischer told ABC News on Friday that Bush never used the device during his time in office. Graves wrote in his statement that he is aware of the decision, but has “requested that President Obama provide a detailed explanation of his authority to delegate this responsibility to a surrogate, whether it is human, machine, or otherwise.”

Autopen, Barack Obama, Patriot Act, Tom Graves, White House