Democrats Force Debate on Election Mishaps

[steve2470]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=390281

WASHINGTON Jan 6, 2005 — Democrats turned Congress' quadrennial counting of electoral votes on Thursday into a battle over Election Day problems in Ohio, forcing the House and Senate to consider a challenge to the presidential count for only the second time since 1877.

President Bush's re-election triumph over Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was not in jeopardy. But after Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., lodged a formal protest that the Ohio votes "were not, under all known circumstances, regularly given," the House and Senate recessed their joint session as required by law and held separate debates on the Ohio irregularities.

Democratic leaders distanced themselves from the effort, which many in the party worried would make them look like sore losers. Bush won Ohio by 118,000 votes and carried the national contest by 3.3 million votes, and Kerry himself meeting with troops in the Middle East did not support the challenge.

Even so, Boxer, Tubbs Jones and several other Democrats, including many black lawmakers, tried using the sessions to underscore the missing voting machines, unusually long lines and other problems that plagued some Ohio districts, many in minority neighborhoods, on Nov. 2.

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[steve2470]

1. Democrats Force Debate on Ohio Election Problems

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/politics/06cnd-elec.html?hp&ex=1105074000&en=5de03a0bc8d6b7a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - A small group of Democrats transformed the traditionally routine ritual of certifying presidential election results into a tart partisan protest today, forcing both the House and Senate to debate Election Day voting problems in Ohio, the state that gave President Bush the crucial electoral votes needed for his re-election.

With both houses under Republican control, the move, only the second of its kind since 1877, did not threaten Bush's victory over Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Indeed, some Democrats opposed it and the White House spokesman likened it to a pursuit of "conspiracy theories."

But its rarity underscored a lingering sensitivity to election irregularities like those that overshadowed the 2000 election. Democrats complained this time that Ohio election officials, headed by a Republican who led the Bush campaign in the state, had provided too few voting machines in some Democratic precincts and allowed other irregularities.

The challenge also demonstrated a readiness among some Democrats, even with the party's diminished presence in the new Congress, to draw a line against a Republican Party that appears determined to make maximum use of its reinforced majority.

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[mzmolly]

2. Yahoo covered the same story. The MSM is finally taking a peek.

VICTORY!