Congress Makes Reelection Official

[rodeodance]

This seems to be the official WP story of the certification.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54512-2005Jan6.html?referrer=email

Congress Makes Reelection Official
Two Lawmakers Raise Objection To Ohio Balloting
By Charles Babington and Brian Faler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 7, 2005; Page A04


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.



....."Some senators . . . have gone to Ukraine to investigate that election," Jackson said. "They've gone to Iraq. But not one has gone to Columbus, Ohio."

Still, some protesters said, yesterday's debates were a good start. "This is going to open the floodgates to information about what happened in Ohio," said one protester, who would give only his first name, Andy.

As the protesters spoke, construction workers were building grandstands for Bush's inauguration festivities along Pennsylvania Avenue.

[AlbizuX]

1. hey, i have a great idea for an inaugural protest.

Get a whole line of of thousands of protesters.

Everyone turn around, pull down your pants, and show your ass to the parading limousine.

No violence, no moving, no disobedience...just show your ass.

I'm sure Bush would not like that.

[papau]

2. Boxer Poses a Challenge, Briefly (at least LAT mentions voting "problems")

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-electoral7jan07,1,3567899.story?coll=la-politics-pointers
Boxer Poses a Challenge, Briefly
The largely symbolic tactic is followed by Congress certifying Bush's reelection.

By Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — To call attention to voting problems, California Sen. Barbara Boxer and an Ohio congresswoman forced a delay of the ceremonial count of electoral votes Thursday in a joint session of Congress called to certify President Bush's reelection victory.

The protests lodged by Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, both Democrats, spurred House and Senate debates on voting problems in Ohio, the state that decided November's election. Boxer said her purpose was not to overturn Bush's reelection but, rather, to focus new attention on flawed voting practices. She also said she regretted not raising a similar objection over the Florida results in the 2000 election, which narrowly tipped that year's White House contest to Bush.

[papau]

3. Democrats challenge Ohio electoral vote count(and overhaul election proces

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/07/democrats_challenge_ohio_electoral_vote_count/
Democrats challenge Ohio electoral vote count
Bitter debate fuels call for overhauls to election process
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | January 7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A small band of Democratic lawmakers yesterday objected to the results of the presidential election in Ohio, triggering an extraordinary debate where Democrats pleaded for an overhaul of election laws, and Republicans accused them of seeking to overturn the will of the people.

[papau]

4. NY Post notes Hillary's support offset by Schumer's "No rigging found"

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/37838.htm
WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a grandstand political play yesterday, breaking from most of her fellow Democrats — and her state's senior senator, Chuck Schumer — when she praised an ultimately futile bid to toss out Ohio's electoral votes and prevent George Bush from being officially certified president.

"As we look at our election system, I think it's fair to say that there are many legitimate questions about accuracy, about its integrity, and they are not confined to the state of Ohio," Clinton said.

Schumer shot down his colleague's comments saying there was no indication the results were rigged.

"My view is that you don't hold up the election unless there is concrete, real evidence of fraud. I haven't seen that," he said.

Clinton wound up flip-flopping on the issue — voting with the vast majority of senators of both parties to certify the results and abandoning the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to whom she intimated that she would vote to block the certification. <snip>

[Earth_First]

17. Am I living in bizarro world?

"As we look at our election system, I think it's fair to say that there are many legitimate questions about accuracy, about its integrity, and they are not confined to the state of Ohio," Clinton said.

Clinton wound up flip-flopping on the issue — voting with the vast majority of senators of both parties to certify the results...

[papau]

18. flip-flopping is GOP talk show speak - she spoke and will be quoted

her vote was not going to change squat and she really felt that there was not enough to overturn the Ohio vote.

[Isere]

5. And where does the NY Times come in?

They put this story on PAGE 15!!!!

Enough said.

A little teaser on the front says "Bush Officially Elected, but Democrats Protest."

[papau]

10. Not that all the media gets direct payment from GOP like Williams!

I thought it was under the table until I saw the USAToday story

USA Today's Greg Toppo turns in an utterly astonishing story about commentator Armstrong Williams pocketing $240,000 from the Administration to promote the No Child Left Behind law on his TV show, and to try to recruit other black journalists to do so as well.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm

White House paid commentator to promote law
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

Williams on being paid to boost NCLB: "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."
AP

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.



"The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA Today through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America's Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists, 'to encourage the producers to periodically address' NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey's manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances."

[papau]

6. The Election's Last Gasp - liberal New York Times ED is actually OK

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/opinion/07fri2.html

The Election's Last Gasp

Published: January 7, 2005

Congressional Democrats staged an unusual protest yesterday when Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio objected to certifying the results of the 2004 election. Supporters of the defeated (and absent) John Kerry then spent two hours making speeches, most of which began with the declaration that George W. Bush had definitely won.

It could not have been a totally satisfactory afternoon for the president's angry supporters or for the conspiracy theorists who still believe that Bush operatives managed to steal Ohio's electoral votes. The final count showed that Mr. Bush had won the state by more than 100,000 votes, and the Democrats who rose to complain about the process prefaced their remarks by saying things like "the irregularities in Ohio would not have overturned the results."

But the Democrats were right to call attention to the defects in the system. Our elections need to do more than produce a legitimate winner. They need to do it through a process that seems fair to all reasonable citizens. On that count, the United States has a way to go.

Electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper trail that can be rechecked in contested elections create worries that a contest could be stolen by computer hacking or by tampering with the machine software. Those concerns seem to have been unfounded in the last election, but it did not require paranoia to think that such things might happen.

It is not illegal to require voters to stand in lines so long that they wind up being forced to give up or to skip work, but it is unfair - particularly when such delays happen mainly in poor and minority neighborhoods. It is not illegal to leave election operations in the hands of a partisan elected official, but such a situation will make the system seem biased to voters from the other side of the political divide. That is what happened in Ohio, where the secretary of state was also a co-chairman of the Bush campaign in that state.

Democrats were obviously most vocal about the sloppy and highhanded way the election was run in many places, but the Republicans should also object. Mr. Bush won the most votes, but he has been deprived of universal confidence in the way they were counted.<snip>

[goclark]

12. It's the adjectives that piss me off!

I thought reporters were to report the news not slant the news.


Notice the use of words like "unusual" to describe the event yesterday.

When you read the stories, they have the put down adjectives that belittle the Democrats every time.

This is not by accident that ALL the writers are doing it this way.
This is being forced from above IMO.

There is no reason that the LAT would have to sink to this level.Even when they say something good, they must make the event smaller than it really was - this should have been front page!

Note the ticker tape on ABC that said there was a "minor squabble" regarding the electoral event.

This is a highly orchestrated system, not just FOX news now, it is ALL of them. There is now no way to get the news to the people.

We MUST have a mini newspaper that we can print out from our computer that we can distribute to everyone we meet and leave copies everywhere. It can be even a 1/2 sheet folded and clipped. It would cost each of us no more than 10 cents to make 100 copies.

That is the only way that liberals will get the truth from now until the historic impeachment of GWB.

[papau]

7. Congress Makes Reelection Official (Election Fraud barely mentioned)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54512-20...
washingtonpost.com
Congress Makes Reelection Official
Two Lawmakers Raise Objection To Ohio Balloting
By Charles Babington and Brian Faler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 7, 2005; Page A04


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.<snip>

[papau]

8. Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge (NYT non reporting)

Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge (Media non reporting)


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/politics/07elect.html
Congress Ratifies Bush Victory After Challenge
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JAMES DAO

ASHINGTON, 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 on Thursday, a single senator - Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who was sworn in Tuesday 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.<snip>

[Norquist Nemesis]

9. Once again, it's the Democrats talking about the issues

while the Republicans chastise, degrade, and dismiss with partisan hyperbole. I was glad to see that it all got into the record.

I kept switching between the House and Senate debates. Every Democrat stayed on the issue of voter suppression and intimidation. Not a single Republican responded to this debate issue. Instead I heard "sour grapes", "trying to destroy democracy", "the party of Michael Moore", "loony", and of course..."extremists from the left". :eyes:

Great debate there ladies and gentleman from the *cough* right *cough* side of the aisle. For all of their speeches on the first day talking bi-partisanship and 'vigorous debate', they really showed their true colors that it's going to be more of the same. *sigh*

[radric]

11. Much as I hate the thought of it I believe Bush won the past..

election (2000 is another story). But for these Republican's to get up and ignore that problems exist in this country with voting is unbelievable. Florida in 2000 and now Ohio? It's amazing that in the 21st century and all the technology that exists now we can't do a better job of ensuring elections are accurate down to the last voter.

[Norquist Nemesis]

13. You may be correct.

The question is, were the numbers there for Bush because of the suppression (with a little padding for good measure from the electronic machines)?

[Earth_First]

16. Keep telling yourself that...

[Vidar]

14. kick

[nodictators]

15. NBC "Nightly News" (sic) slickly covered the challenge

First, we got a little bit, carefully qualified, about the challenge.

Then, we got a Repub (perhaps De Whine) who (falsely) said that there was no evidence of foul play in Ohio. End of segment!

Well, since NBC has probably never reported anything about the voter suppression in Ohio, the Warren County lockdown, the never-explained 4,200+ "votes" for Bush in Gahanna 1-B, the Linda Byrket video documenting the long lines of voters in mostly majority-black precincts that were given an improperly low number of voting machines by Ohio standards, etc., etc., then there is "no" evidence.

It's all in a day's work in the "Heil Bush!" news media.

Link to Byrket QuickTime video:
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/video%20the%20vote.mov