The 3rd time in History does not rate real coverage of what was said - at least not in the pages of the NYTimes (it gets less coverage than the last time when the two chambers interrupted their joint session and meet separately back in 1969, when a "faithless" North Carolina elector designated for Richard Nixon voted instead for independent George Wallace. Both chambers agreed to allow the vote for Wallace)!.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/politics/06cnd-elec.h... January 6, 2005
Democrats Force Debate on Ohio Election Problems
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
ASHINGTON, 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.<snip>
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.<snip>
Senator Boxer Statement On Her Objection To The Certification Of Ohio’s Electoral Votes
http://boxer.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=230450 For most of us in the Senate and the House, we have spent our lives fighting for things we believe in – always fighting to make our nation better.
We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice.
Now we must add a new fight – the fight for electoral justice.
Every citizen of this country who is registered to vote should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth of their community, their vote has as much weight as the vote of any Senator, any Congressperson, any President, any cabinet member, or any CEO of any Fortune 500 Corporation.
I am sure that every one of my colleagues – Democrat, Republican, and Independent – agrees with that statement. That in the voting booth, every one is equal.
FROM WILL PITT INTERVIEW WITH CONYERS:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010705W.shtml PITT: How are you feeling about what is happening today?
CONYERS: We have come a mighty long way. It seems to me, as we began this adventure, to make the ballot as important as it is, and that it be counted, and that it be available to every single qualified American voter, that I had always suspected that it would be hard for the United States Senate to do, again, what they did in 2000. To close down any possibility of any debate, of any investigation, of any recount, and it turns out that my hunch was correct.
The fact of the matter is that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing this. This isn't like there is a down-side to this. It is all up, because as everybody knows, all the phones are jammed, emails are coming in, faxes. People are coming in from all over. This is a test of American democracy, just as in 1878. They passed the law to deal with the presidential election of 1877. We have to, in 2005, pass some more election reform laws to deal with what happened in 2004.
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