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New York Times - January 7, 2005
Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - Congress officially ratified President Bush's election victory on Thursday, but not before Democrats lodged a formal challenge to the electoral votes from Ohio, forcing an extraordinary two-hour debate that began the 109th Congress on a sharp note of partisan acrimony.
It was only the second such challenge to a presidential race since 1877. Even the bitter contest in 2000 between President Bush and Al Gore did not produce a formal challenge to the results from Florida, the site of a 36-day standoff. Although House members objected, no senator joined in, as is required under federal law.
But today, a single senator - Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who was sworn in two days back for a third term - joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Democrat of Ohio, in objecting to Ohio's 20 electoral votes for Mr. Bush, citing voting irregularities in the state.
The move turned what would have otherwise been a polite ceremony into a political and historical drama. Mrs. Boxer said she had acted "to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now."
Instead of holding a courteous joint session to certify the election, lawmakers were forced to retreat to their separate chambers for two hours of debate and a vote on the challenge. Democrats, nearly all of whom conceded that Mr. Bush was the rightful winner, said the move cast a needed spotlight on voting rights. Republicans called it waste of time…..
In the end, the House voted 267 to 31 against the challenge. In the Senate, where the vote was 74 to 1, Mrs. Boxer stood alone.
"I think this is the first time in my life I ever voted alone in the United States Senate, and I have to tell you, I think it was the right thing to do," Mrs. Boxer said afterward, adding that she believed she forced the Republican leadership to listen to concerns about voting rights.
For many Democrats, including Mrs. Boxer, the objection brought back memories of the ceremony in January 2001. Four years ago, after Mr. Gore won the popular vote but Mr. Bush prevailed after six weeks of struggle over Florida, black members of the House stood up to protest the results pleading for a senator to join their objections, but none did.
Mrs. Boxer said that in retrospect "it was a mistake not to object four years ago."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/politics/07elect.html
Washington Post - January 7, 2005
Congress Makes Reelection Official
Two Lawmakers Raise Objection To Ohio Balloting
By Charles Babington and Brian Faler
Invoking rules that sometimes seem as quaint as quill pens, the House and Senate yesterday certified President Bush's reelection despite a rare objection, which was intended to spotlight voting irregularities in Ohio and elsewhere.
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) interrupted the ritual roll call of each state's "certificate of electoral votes" in a joint session of Congress, contending that Ohio's results were not "regularly given." The presiding officer, Vice President Cheney, followed constitutional guidelines and sent lawmakers to their respective chambers so that each house could debate the matter for two hours.
The outcome was never in doubt. With Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) having long ago conceded Ohio and the Nov. 2 election, Boxer and Tubbs Jones said their only goal was to highlight Ohio's Election Day problems, which included long voting lines in several minority neighborhoods compared with short lines in affluent areas.
Boxer told colleagues that Americans have fought for social, economic and criminal justice, and she said, "Now we must . . . fight for electoral justice." On the House floor, Tubbs Jones said the objection was "the only immediate avenue to bring these causes to light."
The Senate eventually voted 74 to 1 to overrule Boxer's objection, even though many Democrats defended her in floor speeches. The House voted 267 to 31 to override the objection, with no Republicans siding with Tubbs Jones. Many lawmakers were at the funeral of Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.) or on trips because they had not expected a roll-call vote.
The scene contrasted with the January 2001 certification of electoral votes, when no senators joined several black House members who objected to Florida's recount in the bitterly contested race between Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore. At least one member of each house must object in order to trigger a debate and a vote. Boxer said yesterday that she regretted granting Gore's request not to object to the 2000 electoral-vote process.
In November, Bush carried the crucial swing state of Ohio by about 118,000 votes, although voters complained of problems in many areas, most of them Democratic-leaning precincts. In Columbus, where some people waited 10 hours to vote, up to 15,000 frustrated would-be voters left without casting ballots. Poorly trained poll workers in Cleveland gave faulty instructions to voters that resulted in thousands of provisional ballots being rejected, and they misdirected several hundred votes to third-party candidates. In Youngstown, 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to Bush, researchers found.
Similar problems occurred in other states, several Democrats said yesterday, and Congress must demand improvements such as electronic voting machines with paper trails for backup data. Congress should "take it upon itself once and for all to reform this system," freshman Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in his first Senate floor speech….
Earlier in the day, more than 100 protesters rallied in front of the White House to demand and, ultimately, celebrate Boxer's decision to join Tubbs Jones in protesting the Ohio vote. They gathered in Lafayette Park, where speakers including Jesse L. Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb portrayed the November election as having been compromised by error and fraud, and demanded that the Senate do something about it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54512-2005Jan6.html
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