The Democrats will stop at nothing

A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates
on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President
Bush's win over Sen. John Kerry in November.

While Bush's victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge will force
Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote, which had been
scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time
since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to
consider electoral votes.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats
to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a protest
signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet
separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to
speak for no more than five minutes each.

What do you bet, they will try to say this was another illegitimate presidency?

Written by mark24609 Blog about this entry

This entry has 5 comments: (Add your own)

#5 Comment from purcellneil
1/17/05 8:56 PM | Permalink

I thought the 2000 election was tainted and I never accepted Bush as completely legitimate. But in 2004, Bush won and I make no bones about his legitimacy.

However, I think we need electoral reform badly. In particular, I think we had better ditch the electoral college, or at the very least move to an allocation of the state by state electoral votes to reflect the percentages of the vote that went for each candidate.

Otherwise, we could end up with a real crisis of legitimacy.

What if Bush had lost Ohio, and the Presidency, but won the popular vote across America by 3 million votes? What if Bush had won a second term by a squeaker in Ohio and in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by 3 million?

It could have happened. What would the consequences have been for our country to have such an ambiguous outcome?

We ought to fix this, and we ought to make sure we have confidence in the voting machines (and have enough of them in poor neighborhoods as well as in the suburbs) and we need to let civil service officials run the elections instead of political appointees or elected officials who have a partisan stake in the outcome.

I'm sure there is more we could do to make sure our elections are not vulnerable in 2008 to the kinds of complaints we have heard in the past two elections.

I am sure some of it is partisan griping and sore losers, but enough of this is real that we all ought to get together and fix it.

Neil
#4 Comment from candles102
1/8/05 10:21 AM | Permalink

This just shows how ANNOYING they are!!!
~Sarah Flansburg
http://journals.aol.com/candles102/SarahFlansburgsPoliticalJournal
#3 Comment from republicanjen
1/6/05 8:29 PM | Permalink

I thought the whole thing ridiculous. IT's a dog and pony show if I ever saw one.
#2 Comment from ibspiccoli4life
1/6/05 3:49 PM | Permalink

Mark,

I got an email from the Kerry campaign on this one and as far as I can tell they are not questioning the outcome of the vote at all. They are simply pointing out a number of irregularities that occurred and saying, "Can't we do better? Can't we make sure that the American people can trust that their vote will be counted?" That seems to be the gist of it.

dave,
http://journals.aol.com/ibspiccoli4life/RandomThoughtsfromaProgressiveMi
#1 Comment from hpgalactis
1/6/05 10:32 AM | Permalink

Well what I think and hope this is is to get the ball rolling on voter/electorial reform. Bush wins I think even if he lost ohio so nothing will be changed. it's on cspan right now.

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The Democrats will stop at nothing