Ohio challenge

[Will F.D. People]

This is really, really, really bad precedent if the Democrats do this. We do not want to even hint that Congress can un-do a Presidential election because they don't like the results. There could be a full-blown Constitutional crisis in the future when it transpires that the Congress is not controlled by the same party as the evident Presidential victor, and the party with the Congressional majority seeks to overturn the election.

Let me ask this: we hear how much is demanded of Bush to "reach out" and include Democrats in his decision making. How in the heck can a baseless challenge to his election do anything but spoil a spirit of co-operation?

[Will F.D. People]

Bush reached out? What crack are you smoking?

Do YOU really want to play the "you" card and make this personal??

My point is that why in the world should Bush reach out to these idiots after they pull a cynical, partisan, bitter stunt like this? And the fact that Democratic leadership went along with it shows that the Democrat leadership is willing to risk the very foundation of our democracy to score some short term political points.

Our democracy took a serious blow today and I am not happy about it.

[Will F.D. People]

If Ted Kennedy changed his mind about No Child Left Behind, that is his problem. Bush clearly reached out to Kennedy and Kennedy accepted. This counts as Bush reaching out, whether any other poster "likes" it or not.

[Will F.D. People]

Clearly, some members of Congress had questions about whether Ohio's electoral votes were "regularly given"--specifically, whether the election (and subsequent recount) in Ohio was held in accordance with all Ohio and federal laws.

Given that they had those questions, it was their duty to object to the votes and to call for a discussion.

They were doing their job.  Anybody who suggests they should have ignored their own doubts just to make the process run more smoothly is not really interested in fair elections.

And for what it's worth, the fact that only Ohio was challenged is absolute, undeniable proof that this was NOT about changing the outcome of the election--even if Ohio's votes had been rejected, Bush would have won, 266-251.  There was no alternate slate to allow, so there would have been only 518 votes cast, and only 260 would have been required to win.  The other states that might conceivably been contested had already been passed over.

Here is a problem with the idea of challenging Ohio on the basis that the votes were not "regularly given".

If there were discrepancies in the way the election was held compared to the law, it seriously looks to me like the discrepancies were minor, isolated, and had no bearing on the outcome of the election. To me, there simply is not enough to warrant a challenge.

If we accept that any violation of election law no matter how small or inconsequential to the outcome is allowed to be the basis for a challenge, we are opening up a Pandora's box that I think the country can ill afford. For instance, in my state there is a law that says campaign signs can be no closer than something like 50 feet from the entrance of a polling place. Suppose by accident some precinct measures wrong and allows signs 45 feet from the entrance. Now we have an illegal election, which by today's precedent and by the quoted argument, would be fair game for being challenged in the Joint Session. This can only lead to disaster.

In fact, what may happen is election workers will intentionally violate inconsequential parts of the law just to create grounds to challenge the election later.

In my view the challengers in Congress were derelict in their duty to the country. They were willing to undermine the entire democratic process in order to attempt to make political points. That is just awful. If there are ways to make the election process better, risking our democratic underpinnings to do it is irresponsible. There is a better place and time to make their point.


Now had Ohio's votes actually been thrown out, I don't agree that this would have simply reduced the number of appointed electors. I think it would have thrown the election to the House.

[Will F.D. People]

Two hours in Congress is an outrageous delay.

Ten hours in Ohio is not even worth talking about.

By the way, how many long lines are being alleged occurred in Ohio? I saw 1 on TV.

As we learned in another topic in the forum, Ohio has a law that there can be no more than 1400 voters per precinct. If the line is so long that it scares away even the ridiculously high number of one-half of the precincts voters, were are talking about 700 scared away voters per long line.

If every single one of these scared away voters would have voted for Kerry, we would need almost 200 long lines to have enough discouraged voters to make a difference. I am pretty sure that if there were actually 200 long lines, we would have seen more than 1 of them on TV.

And even if the line is long, so what? I was willing to wait for as long as it took for my 30 seconds of filing by RWR's coffin last year. The fact that it took me only 3 hours was a bonus. If voting is such a sacred right and all that, stand in the d*** line to exercise it.

[Will F.D. People]

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If anyone actually believed that, we probably would have seen 51 challenges today, rather than one.

 

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This hasn't been a problem in local elections where small margins are common; there is no reason to suspect it will become a problem in Presidential elections.  Even if it were, it is reasonable for us to expect our Representatives and Senators to do their jobs, and to actually debate and consider any challenges to electoral votes.  As long as they
do this, frivolous challenges based on minor events will not result in overturning any elections.

Before the challenge in Congress, I would have agreed with you. Your post really makes my case for me -- it lays out the POLITICAL reason that the challenge was made. I do not think it was in good faith to  disrupt the system for a political point. This breach of good faith sets a bad precedent for future challenges based not on uncertainty of the election result.

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They undermined nothing.  They followed the Constitutionally prescribed method of challenging questionable electoral votes.  They forced a discussion of voting problems that have been largely ignored.  We will see a number of election-reform proposals come from the 109th Congress.
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Not true. There is no constitutionally prescribed method of challenging electoral votes, questionable or otherwise. (And the challengers admit the votes were not even questionable). The challengers acted in accordance with US Code, not the Constitution. The law they used was passed in the wake of the Hayes/Tilden dispute in the 1870s. Congress took it upon themselves to devise a method to handle cases where there was a disupte over a states electoral votes.

If the objection had been sustained, I would hope that Ohio would take the matter to the Supreme Court and let it determe if Congress had the power to reject the duly certified results submitted by a sovreign state.

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First, the GOP did not block HAVA. Second, one man's reform is another man's complication. I heard one of the challengers (Jesse Jackson Jr.) say that we needed a standard nationwide voting system. I think this would create more problems that it would solve, and perhaps the GOP would agree with me and block that. I would prefer for each state to look at the experiences of the other states and come up with their own solution as opposed to have Washington bureaucrats decide what system is best for every precinct in the country.