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After debate congress certifies bush election { January 7 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/stories/01/07electoral.htmlhttp://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/stories/01/07electoral.html
After unusual flap, Congress certifies Bush election
By Bob Dart
Cox News Service
Friday, January 07, 2005
WASHINGTON — Turning a humdrum formality into an historic fight, Democrats delayed congressional certification of President Bush's re-election Thursday until both the House and Senate voted to overcome an objection to the Ohio presidential electors.
After sometimes acrimonious debate, Congress eventually certified Bush's 286-251 electoral vote victory.
The challenge by members of the losing political party was only the second time since 1877 that the normally routine counting of Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress was interrupted to require a separate vote in both chambers.
The objection to the Ohio electors was voted down in the Senate by a 74-1 vote. The lone holdout was Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., who had lodged the objection. The House voted 267-31 to uphold the Ohio electoral count, with most of the objecting votes coming from members of the Black Caucus who had charged that minority voters were disproportionately disenfranchised.
Democrats had charged that voting machine shortages led to long lines in predominately African-American neighborhoods, that voting machines broke down, that the machines were manufactured by a Bush backer, that Ohio's Republican Party had engaged in pre-election intimidation and that many Democratic ballots went uncounted. Republicans countered that the results had been unanimously certified by a bipartisan elections board.
In Congress, the objecting Democrats said they were not seeking to reverse the election results but rather to highlight problems in Ohio's election process. Republicans called the delay "sour grapes" and an attempt to undermine the election's legitimacy and Bush's standing.
"This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning or challenging the victory of the president," said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who lodged the formal House objection. "But it is a necessary, timely and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most precious process in our democracy."
But Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, called the allegations of election fraud in his home state "wild, incoherent and completely unsubstantiated."
"I find it almost impossible to believe that I am actually standing on the floor of the United States Senate engaged in a debate over whether or not George Bush won Ohio in the 2004 presidential election," said DeWine. "Clearly, he did, and did so by over 118,000 votes."
Nationwide, Bush defeated Democratic candidate John Kerry by 3.3 million votes and the Massachusetts senator himself did not back the challenge to the Electoral College vote.
Kerry was visiting U.S. troops in Iraq but issued a statement recalling, "On Nov. 3, I conceded the presidential election to George Bush and also expressed my commitment to ensuring that every vote in this election is counted."
"While I am deeply concerned with the issues being highlighted by colleagues in Congress," said Kerry, "I will not be joining their protest of the Ohio electors."
In order to force a vote by both branches of Congress, the objection had to be raised by both a Senator and House member. Boxer acknowledged that even members of her own party were against her action.
"Clearly, I was doing this on my own," said Boxer. "Colleagues on both sides are unhappy" with the delaying tactic.
Indeed, Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota went on the Senate floor to declare that he "emphatically disagrees" with Boxer.
"Our role is not to adjudicate," he said. If one political party or the other were to prevail in such a last-minute congressional challenge and try to overturn a presidential election, he said, "the damage to our democracy would be incalculable."
However, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Ma., commended Boxer for objecting.
"While we do not question the outcome, many of us remain deeply concerned that, for the second time in a row in a closely contested election, there we so many complaints about the ability of voters to cast their ballots and have them counted clearly," said Kennedy.
Boxer said she had not objected to the 2000 electoral count at the behest of Al Gore, the losing Democratic candidate in a bitterly contested election. "Frankly, looking back on it, I wish I had," she said.
"There is no electoral cost to Boxer," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, who noted that she just own easy re-election and won't face the voters again until the middle of the next president's first term. "What does she gain? She becomes a hero to the blue-hots, the blue-state Democrats who burn with anti-Bush passion."
However, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called the effort "a shame" that sought "not justice but noise."
Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., poked fun at the notion that a nefarious computer network run from the White House had been used to thwart a Democratic majority vote in Ohio. Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, likened the Democratic objectors to the "boy who cried wolf" and said their baseless charges of voter fraud helps undermine faith in the electoral system.
But the objection was defended by Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
"The challenge raised to the certification of the Ohio Electoral College vote was not intended to undo President Bush's election victory or promulgate a 'conspiracy theory' as some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have suggested," he said. "Rather than listing all of the various infringements of the right to vote that occurred in Ohio, and many other states around the country, I hope that the result of today's debate on the certification of the Ohio electors will be that the 109th Congress will place fixing our election system at the top of our agenda."
The Joint Session began at 1 p.m. with a ceremonial call of the states in alphabetical order and a certification of their electoral vote for either Bush or Kerry. When "Ohio" was called, Boxer and Tubbs Jones issued their objection to counting the state's 20 electoral votes.
By law, the members then went to their separate chambers to consider and vote on the challenge. Two hours of debate were allowed with each member limited to a five-minute speech.
The last time the two chambers were forced to interrupt their joint vote-counting session and meet separately was in January 1969, when a "faithless" North Carolina elector designated for Richard Nixon voted instead for independent George Wallace, according to the Associated Press. Both chambers agreed to allow the vote for Wallace.
The previous challenge requiring separate House and Senate meetings was in 1877 during the disputed contest that Rutherford B. Hayes eventually won over Samuel Tilden.
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