Subject: BOXER HAS SIGNED ON!!!!!! Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 10:20:54 -0600 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD020235F082@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Hale, C. Kate" <HALECL@uwec.edu>
Published on Thursday, January 6, 2005 by the Associated Press
Dems To Force Debate on Ohio Results
by Alan Fram
In case you haven't heard: see snippet below from Commondreams.
Coverage on CSPAN starting at 1:00 EST (noon for us)!
Kate
English
WASHINGTON -- A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House
and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting
Congress certify President Bush's win over Sen. John Kerry in November.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House
Democrats to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By
law, a challenge signed by members of the House and Senate requires both
chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it.
Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.
While Bush's victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge will
force Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote, which
is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the
second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into
separate meetings to consider electoral votes.
"I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the
only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to
have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts
surrounding Ohio's election," Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie
Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, a leader of the Democratic effort. A group of
Democrats hopes to train a national spotlight on claims of widespread
Election Day problems in Ohio when Congress formally tallies the
electoral votes that gave President Bush his re-election triumph.
In ceremony as old as the Constitution itself, the House and Senate were
meeting in joint session Thursday to count the electoral votes, state by
state in alphabetical order. Vice President Dick Cheney was presiding in
his role as president of the Senate, overseeing as each state's votes
are withdrawn from mahogany boxes and totaled.
C. Kate Hale, Ph.D.
UWEC Dept. of English
Office: 617 Hibbard Hall
715-836-2761
halecl@uwec.edu