U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER HOLDS BRIEFING FOR THE PRESS, CARRIED LIVE ON C-SPAN 2
JOINS WITH REPRESENTATIVE STEPHANIE TUBBS-JONES OF OHIO IN CHALLENGE TO COUNTING THE ELECTORS OF OHIO
Member of the House of Representatives from Ohio District 11 to present objection to recording the votes of the Electors of Ohio
In a press conference covered live on C-Span 2, Senator Barbara Boxer of California has announced that she will co-sign an objection sponsored by Stepanie Tubbs-Jones of the Cleveland area to the votes of the Electors of Ohio. The consent of a member of the Senate is necessary for any challenge from a House member as to the ‘regularity’ of Electors’ votes. Similarly, an objection from a member of the Senate must be paired with a House sponsor in order to recess the procedure for counting the votes of Electors, which will begin at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time in the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Barbara Boxer – a long-standing liberal Democrat who has consistently favored onerous and restrictive firearms legislation – has suddenly discovered that there are provisions in the Constitution for the United States which she thinks are worthwhile. Those who have not followed the issues of the Ohio election closely will be surprised to learn that two of the leading activist groups behind the many complaints about voting in Ohio last November, are Libertarian Michael Badnarik and Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb. Despite having almost nothing in common as political movements, the Libertarians and the Green activists have come together to help fund an official demand for a recount, which in Ohio costs more than $113,000 to file …
Boxer, answering questions after her prepared remarks were given, made a most surprising admission. When asked why she was not inclined to endorse similar objections made during the official count of Electors in 2001 ( for the disputed 2000 election ), she said that she was asked by former Vice President Albert S. Gore not to approve any of the objections raised at that time.
Almost all of the same issues that divided Democrats, Republicans and independent voters in 2000 were raised again in the remarks of Senator Boxer and Representative Tubbs-Jones:
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people who were supposed to be registered to vote in their area were apparently not on the voter lists;
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some predominantly African-American voting precincts in Ohio were troubled with a shortage of voting machines, while suburban precincts in the same counties seemed to have enough;
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voters in the precincts served by Kenyon College in Ohio had long waits to vote, due to a shortage of machines;
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more than one county reported problems with vote counting, and discrepancies between the original count and recounts: in one case, a county recorded more than 4000 votes above and beyond those eligible to vote in the precincts in question;
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Tubbs-Jones raised the issue of a lack of conformity between States, noting that in some States convicted felons can regain their right to vote following successful completion of probation or their sentence, while in other States they are permanently barred from voting ( the message here being that this adversely impacts African-American men who’ve served time for felonies ).
What is doubly interesting about the process, so far, is that the Cobb-LaMarche campaign and their supporters in the Green Party and among those who identify with “Code Pink”, and other ultra-liberals like the Reverend Jesse Jackson, have been able to parlay these protests and complaints into a substantial fund-raising campaign. The Green faction has raised more than $ 150,000 to get the filing fee for the Ohio recount paid, and they have clearly had help from Libertarian party activists.
Perennial gadfly and neo-socialist suck-up Ralph Nader is nowhere to be seen in the process, and has virtually disappeared from view after spending almost all of his campaign monies and time on court challenges to ballot access laws and decisions in Pennsylvania, Texas and a few other States. By contrast, Cobb and Jackson are all over the place and are effectively using the Internet for their purposes.
As it happens, not all the members of the Senate will be in the House chamber today: Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are on a fact-finding trip in the Tsunami zone – while some House members are on a trip to China, Japan and North Korea.
The certification of the Electoral votes is done in a Joint Session of Congress, with the Vice President sitting as the President of the Senate. It began on time at l:00 Eastern.