Weekly Shredder 28:
The Ohio Certification Debate
by James Norton

What were those few, foolhardy, ultimately invisible Democrats thinking?

What were they thinking when they took to the House floor last week to object to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes?

Possibly this:

By objecting to Ohio's votes on the grounds that the balloting was logistically flawed, racially skewed and corrupted by an obscenely partisan secretary of state, the Democrats could force a national debate on national election reform.

Anyone who doesn't agree that free, fair and transparent elections are a critical part of American democracy is a fascist bastard. Therefore, a push for election reform might attract the American public and Republicans with even partially functional consciences.

For archives, audio, and background about the column, click here.

Not so much. In today's political environment, true bipartisanship is about as common as emotionally healthy women at GenCon.

Thus, instead of a national conversation about how to best ensure clean elections, Americans who tuned in to C-SPAN on Jan. 6 were treated to the heartburn-inducing spectacle of Congress absolutely melting down.

The Democrats: ill-disciplined, out of synch with the media and American public, high on a toxic cocktail of idealism and would-be hardball politics mixed in precisely the wrong proportions.

The Republicans: shrill, brutal and unwilling to grapple with any of the salient facts at hand, happy to play a game of political horseshoe with their usual bag of nasty and indiscriminate framing devices. The Democrats are "sore losers." The Democrats are blinded by Michael Moore-inspired conspiracy theories. The Democrats, by expressing any kind of dissent whatsoever, are playing into the hands of the terrorists.

It's an interesting argument. Go back to C-SPAN and watch the debate, and see who is arguing for better voting machines, fair access to the polls, and nonpartisan oversight of the system. And then see who is calling the would-be reformers un-American. And then decide which party — Republican or Democratic — is more concerned with democracy as the framers intended it, and which party is interested purely in maintaining a grip on power.

On the Democratic side of the aisle, two women kicked off the challenge.

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones is the black Democratic representative from Ohio who takes no guff when it comes to standing up for her constituents.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is the white senator who stuck her neck out to support Jones in her bid to make Ohio's electoral challenges a national issue. She's a hard-charger who bucks the system.

Together they are... Boxer and Jones.

And on Jan. 6, they held a joint press conference during which they made two clear and simple points:

1) The objection to the Ohio vote certification was not expected to pass; nor was it intended to halt Bush's election as president.

2) It was intended only to draw national attention to voting irregularities and the need for election reform.

Both these points were roundly ignored by nearly every Republican to take the floor, who blasted the entire Democratic party (not the small band of mostly black and mostly liberal members of Congress who actually mounted and spoke up for the challenge) for trying to dethrone Bush.

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., was the most physically grating of the right-wing hacks to put Jones and Boxer in their crosshairs. With the condescending self-satisfaction of a PTA parent on the right side of a winning vote to ban "Catcher in the Rye" from the school library, Miller laid out her case: The Democrats are a bunch of whiny crybabies.

Mr. Speaker, the American people must be watching this debate and literally shaking their heads. With all of the challenges facing our nation we are spending our time debating the challenge to the validity of the presidential election simply because the Democratic Party cannot accept the fact that their candidate lost this election.

They cannot accept the fact that their agenda, that their vision for America has been rejected by the majority of Americans. They cannot accept the fact that President George W. Bush simply received more votes than Sen. John Kerry.

No, Representative Miller. Every Democratic speaker took great pains to say explicitly that ousting Bush wasn't the point. You can even trust them on it, because it was clear from the get-go that they would never have the votes. Not controlling the House is kind of an impediment.

And what Democratic vision did America reject when it rejected Kerry, precisely? He's a good man and had some bright moments as a candidate, but even Kerry supporters would be at a loss to explain the particulars of his agenda.

In the spirit of bipartisanship they say that somehow Karl Rove was manipulating votes from a secret computer in the White House and that somehow these secret computers were changing the votes on punch cards and optical scan sheets that record actual votes. This language is in their challenge.

No, Rep. Miller. Oddly enough, Boxer and Jones were savvy enough to not actually cite "Karl Rove secretly manipulating votes from a secret supercomputer" as their reason for their challenge. That language was, as they say, "not in their challenge."

How interesting, however, that their challenge as it talks about conspiracies in the State of Ohio, making allegations that have no basis of fact, their challenge is silent about an incident in Ohio where fraudulent voter registration forms were being submitted and the worker who collected them was paid in crack cocaine.

How interesting that their challenge does not mention the Democratic group ACORN which submitted vote registrations for dead people that used 25 different addresses for the same individual.

How interesting, Rep. Miller, that these reasons you cite are bipartisan reasons to be concerned about clean elections and election reform. Are you deliberately trying to prove the Democrats' point? Or are you so dully concerned with schoolyard "zings" that you can't figure out when your own barbs are carrying your opponents' water?

In more challenging electoral times, Michigan's voters might return this majestic but not incredibly bright wildebeest to the toxic country-club suburb that spawned her. But because the turnover for members of Congress is pretty much zero, we'll likely get to enjoy the pearls from The Mind of Candice Miller for years to come.

Oh well. At least she isn't: Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif..

We are in the midst of a global war on terrorism and the people who are leading that war on terrorism clearly have no confidence whatsoever in the process of self-determination. And that is why I think that this exercise which we are going through today clearly emboldens those who would, in fact, want to undermine the prospect of democracy because there is no evidence whatsoever, no evidence whatsoever that the claims that are being made are valid.

Let's parse this slowly, from Dreier's perspective.

FACT: Terrorists are at war with freedom itself.

FACT: Freedom is epitomized by American democracy.

FACT: To call for an examination and reform of democracy after a troubled election in order to ensure that all future voters have a chance to cast their ballots and that all votes are counted is helping the terrorists.

Dreier is suggesting — in language barely more veiled than what you would hear on the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity — that dissent on the question of the Ohio election is nigh-treasonous. It's become a favorite Republican trope to cite the definition of treason as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and to define "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" as "anything that stands politically in the way of the president.

Dreier reaches for this smear like a golf pro going for a 9-iron.

As for "no evidence whatsoever": Dreier might want to read the Baltimore Sun, Wired or the research of Michigan Rep. John Conyers. It's not conclusive. But it's troubling to anyone who wants fair elections. And it's worth checking out.

Let's check in with Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla.

There's a wise saying we've used quite a bit in Florida over the past 4 years that the other side would do well to learn — Get over it. Isn't it ironic that the only people who refuse to "move on," are the people from MoveOn.org, and their hero Michael Moore?

Quickly: Was this written by the congressman himself, who stayed up until 2 a.m., chuckling over his own wit? Or was it written by the congressman's nephew Jeff, an intern and would-be speechwriter who secretly dreams of being the head writer for "The Simpsons"?

Verdict: impossible to tell. At any rate, there's a wise saying we've used quite a bit in New York over the past 40 years — don't describe things as "ironic" unless you know exactly what you're doing, lest you "ironically" look like an idiot.

And why drag MoveOn and Michael Moore into this, exactly? The Democrats are talking about insecure voting machines, long lines at the polls, and a partisan election official who did his best to suppress the black urban vote. These are serious topics that deserve something more engaging than a wallow through the pop-culture hot buttons of the Rush Limbaugh fringe right.

Is this pandering to the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party? Is it worth wasting two hours of Congress' time? The only bigger waste of two hours would be to go see Fahrenheit 9/11.

He may have a point. But it's worth noting that this is largely the same Congress that has gutted the tax base by dropping taxes for the wealthiest, shruggingly gone along with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's irresponsible plunge into the Iraq quagmire, and actually diminished the longevity of the Medicare system with "reform" that was tailor-made to the needs of pharmaceutical companies.

Perhaps wasting two hours of congressional time is about as patriotic as it gets right now.

E-mail James Norton at jim@flakmag.com.

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)