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Contesting The Validity… Not The Result?
By Matt Margolis | January 7, 2005
In the aftermath of the battle in Congress over Bush’s victory has lead Democrats to take the position that they were not expecting the outcome to change, but rather address the problems in the electoral process. Now voices on the left think that Republicans&mash;who strongly opposed the theatrics in Congress yesterday—don’t want to address these problems.
No one will deny that there are flaws in the system. At Blogs For Bush we did our best in the weeks and months leading up to the election to highlight uncovered cases of potential abuse.
But what happened in Congress yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with address the problems of our electoral process. The source of “evidence” used yesterday was a 100-page report citing alleged problems in Ohio—and Ohio alone. The state Bush won which gave him the presidency.
Had the real concern been addressing the problems of the electoral process, then other states with alleged problems would have been included in this manifesto, such as Pennsylvania, a state with 21 electoral votes, and Democrat governor, who in the days leading up to the election sought to disenfranchise the military and give convicted felons the right to vote. Kerry won the state. I have yet to hear a single Democrat in Congress argue about irregularities in Pennsylvania.
The 100-page “report” also would have addressed the gubernatorial race in Washington, which according to the latest, had Democrat Christine Gregoire winning by the slimmest of margins—126 votes, which more problems and irregularities coming out in the aftermath that faith in the electoral process in the state has suffered far more drastically than any other state in the union for sure.
If the contesting of the Ohio electors yesterday was not really about changing the results of the election, the debate would never have occurred. It has been reported that John Kerry himself plans to propose some type of election reform legislation during the 109thsession of Congress. The problems with the electoral process would have been more appropriately addressed when this legislation is brought up for debate as opposed to an unnecessary delay of the formal tallying of the electoral votes.
Using Ohio as the sole focus of the debate during the official tally by Congress was undoubtedly effectively protesting the results of the election. The results were inevitably certified, and the Democrats in Congress who formally protested knew nothing would change that.
Yet, according the small number of Democrats, this contesting of the validity of the results in Ohio was not about changing the results. How do you contest the validity of the results if the point isn’t about changing the outcome?
So why did they do it? By protesting during the official tallying of the electoral votes it merely served to further embolden the constituents of the Democratic Party who do still hold on to the belief that John Kerry won Ohio and the presidency. Congressional Democrats can now say that they made a stand, and now their supporters can continue their futile fight in the background. That’s what it was all about. That, and the Democrats want to pretend as if they have the moral high ground on the issue of election fraud.
I do not doubt that our electoral process has flaws and needs improvement. I think the country needs Congress to take a bipartisan look at the electoral process, note the flaws, and fix them. However, the grandstanding that occurred yesterday was meaningless and motivated by partisanship—not the desire for the integrity of the eletoral process.
Topics: General |
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January 7th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Wow, Matt, you certainly have a close bond with Senator Boxer, the way you are able to discern her motives and tell us what she meant, even when it goes directly against what she specifically said. Sorry, buddy, but you have it half wrong. It never was about changing the result - that’s where you’re wrong. You’re right, though, that the Democrats do have the moral high ground now.
January 7th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
Dan–read what i wrote one more time. Of course it was never about changing the result…
and no.. Democrats don’t have any high ground on the issue. if they did, they’d be talking about Wasington state and Pennsylvania…
January 9th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Regarding Washington state, the results endured three recounts, two machine and one hand, during which ballots wrongly left out of the original count were discovered. It is one thing to discount a ballot due to voter/registration error, it is quite another to discount it due to clerical errors by the counters.
So the winner changed hands. It is plainly obvious that there were errors in the state. However, I don’t remember Rossi calling for a re-vote (during which he was calling for Gregoire’s concession) due to the errors in the process while he maintained his slimmer 42 vote lead. Certainly if the election were so mired in problems that it required a re-vote, his original lead is no more valid that Gregoire’s lead that was certified.
Personally, I think a re-vote is in order. It won’t happen–but I don’t thin either party has the high ground in that state.
January 9th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
Suppose the dems waited until Kerry did introduce legislation. The republican response would be ‘If the system was broken, why didn’t you call for a recount when you had the chance?’. Now that base is covered. What has ANYBODY been doing about this since 2000? These were supposed to be the most important elections in the history of the world, but actually getting the electoral system working beforehand didn’t seem to be a priority.
January 9th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
the fact that Dems didn’t push for such reforms after 2000 is quite telling actually. they were probably hoping to steal the 2004 election…
January 10th, 2005 at 9:13 am
I’m sure it is entirely coincidental that the ONLY state to experience alleged voter fraud/disenfranchisement this time around was one which had
a) George W. Bush as the winner
AND
b) enough electoral votes to swing the election had it gone into the Kerry column.
OK, so that narrows the list down to three (TX, FL, OH). Now which one had the smallest margin of victory for W?
What do you know? It’s Ohio. Kerry won a handful of states by smaller vote margins, but miraculously, those states experienced no voter “irregularities”.
I’m stunned.