NO wonder they are asking for healing between the parties.
Elector Challenge Day
January 6, 2001
On January 6, 2001, any invalid Electors can be challenged by as few as ONE Senator and
ONE Representative.
As set forth in 3 U.S.C. section 15, Congress will convene in joint session at 1 p.m., presided over by
the President of the Senate (Vice President Al Gore). He will open the Certificate of Ascertainment
from each state in alphabetical order and call for objections.
"Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without
argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of
the House of Representatives before the same shall be received."
Following such a challenge, the House and the Senate meet separately to debate the challenge for 2
hours, and then vote on the challenge. A simple majority is sufficient to uphold a challenge.
We believe such a challenge is not only justified by the facts, but is also mandated by history in order
to preserve our sacred Democracy. We believe both Democrats and Republicans are morally
obligated to uphold a challenge to the Florida Electors.
There is a direct precedent for such a challenge. In 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular
vote. But the Republican Congress successfully challenged the Democratic Electors from several states
and thereby installed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as President. Everything we propose is strictly in
accord with the rules written by that Republican Congress in 1877, 3 U.S.C. section 15.
Here are the facts:
1. On November 7, 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by over half a MILLION votes.
Gore
50,996,064
Bush
50,456,167
Gore Victory
539,897
Al Gore received the second largest number of votes in American history, second only to Ronald
Reagan's re-election in 1984.
Al Gore's margin of victory over George W. Bush was nearly five times larger than John F.
Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, and nearly as large as Jimmy Carter's victory
over Gerald Ford in 1980.
Morally, we believe Al Gore won the Presidency of the United States.
2. On November 7, 2000, the people of Florida voted for Al Gore. As a result, the 25 Electors
for George W. Bush are invalid and should be rejected by the U.S. Congress.
Each day's news proves that Al Gore won Florida.
Date
Action
Gore Margin
12/8
Florida Supreme Court revised count
-154
12/19
Lake County manual recount (+130)
-24
12/20
Broward partial manual recount (+164)
+140
The revised numbers from Lake and Broward counties come from news organizations using the same
conservative standards that were used by Republican officials in Orange and Seminole counties and are
included in the official totals. These news organizations will continue to count the votes in the coming
days.
According to the Miami Herald, Al Gore would would win by 23,000 if all of the 185,000 undervotes
and overvotes are counted.
There were dozens of serious problems with the election in Florida.
It is now clear that powerful Republicans at all levels did everything in their power to stop Democratic
voter from voting or having their votes counted. These actions included:
Before the election, Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris spent $4 million of taxpayer
dollars to hire a Republican firm with ties to far-right activists to purge voters who were allegedly
felons. The list of "felons" included 8,000 people – mostly minorities – who committed only
misdemeanors. In addition, the purge removed thousands of innocent voters, again mostly
minorities, with the same names as felons.
In the weeks before the election, Republican Supervisors of Election in Seminole and Martin
counties broke the law by allowing Republican operatives to add information to thousands of
incomplete absentee ballot applications, while voiding incomplete Democratic and Independent
applications.
Immediately after the election, Governor Jeb Bush publicly promised to stay out of the fight. But
according to the New York Times, Jeb's top aides and lawyers used every lever of power to
stop the recount, including Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the Republican-led Florida
legislature, and an army of lawyers, media activists, and thugs.
In Duval County, 27,000 votes were discarded, primarily in African-American sections of
Jacksonville. This represented one-fourth of the votes in certain precincts. However, the
Republican Supervisor of Elections refused to tell local Democrats the facts until it was too late
to demand a recount.
In Miami-Dade county, a court-ordered manual recount of 10,750 undervotes was stopped by a
riot engineered by Bush operative Roger Stone and led by Congressman John Sweeney and
Republican Congressional staffers. Bush and Cheney both called the rioters that evening to
congratulate them.
Four of the five Republican Supreme Court Justices who ultimately blocked the recount had
conflicts of interest. Chief Justice Rehnquist started his career in the Republican Party by
preventing minorities from voting in Phoenix as a leader of Operation Eagle Eye in the early
1960's. Antonin Scalia's worked for the law firms that directed Bush's legal strategy during the
recount. Sandra Day O'Connor shouted "this is terrible" when Florida was called for Gore early
on Election night, because she would be unable to retire with Gore as President. And Clarence
Thomas' wife is screening potential Bush administration appointees from her job at the Heritage
Foundation.
Beyond these specific instances of wrongdoing, the Florida election also suffered from:
Systematic violation of the Voting Rights Act, resulting in the denial of votes by tens of thousands
of black voters.
Systematic violation of the Americans with Disability Act, resulting in the denial of votes by tens
of thousands of disabled voters
Systematic violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (as interpreted by
the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore), most notably in the fact that newer equipment in
Republican-leaning counties produced an error rate of only .3%, while older equipment in
Democratic-leaning counties produced an error rate TEN TIMES HIGHER.
Even with all of these problems, Al Gore still would have won if all of the votes had been counted, as
ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. This was prevented by the unprecedented and partisan
interference of a narrow 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore
has been widely criticized as the most illegitimate decision since Plessy v. Ferguson.
Under the Constitution, Congress is not obligated to accept the Supreme Court's decision as the final
word in the selection of Electors. Just as the Florida legislature was considered within its rights to
effectively overrule the Florida Supreme Court, so too is Congress within its rights to effectively
overrule the U.S. Supreme Court in this matter. As described above, the procedure for challenging
Electors is explicitly contained in the law, and has been used in the past - not only in 1877, but also in
1969 when a challenge was made to a North Carolina Elector who cast his vote for George Wallace.
3. On December 18, the 32 Electors from Texas violated the 12th Amendment. As a result,
their votes are also invalid and should also be rejected by Congress.
The 12th Amendment is unambiguous:
The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice
President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the wame state with themselves...
Richard Cheney has been an "inhabitant" of Texas since he become CEO of Halliburton in 1993 and
moved into an expensive home in a Dallas suburb. He claims that he became an "inhabitant" of
Wyoming on July 20, 2000 when he traveled there briefly to change his voter registration. In fact, he
may have committed a felony by falsely claiming Wyoming residency.
Several lawsuits have been filed challenging the legitimacy of the Texas Electors. Republican judges
have sided with Cheney, claiming that the Constitution's "inhabitancy" standard is equivalent to current
"residency" standards. But the "original intent" of the 12th Amendment was to determine where the
candidates "lived" in the plain meaning of the word. Thus, the proper standard for judging "inhabitancy"
would be the stricter standard of "domicile," not "residency."
The Supreme Court asked Bush-Cheney to respond to the lawsuit on appeal by January 10. This is too
late to assist Congress in its deliberations, but Members of Congress can make their own determination
of Cheney's compliance with the plain meaning of the 12th Amendment.
4. For Additional Information:
Elector Challenge FAQ
Electoral College and Congress (Congressional Research Service, 11/17/2000)
Congress Could Reject Florida Electors Because of Voting Irregularities
Take Action!
Tell your Representatives
to Reject Florida's
Stolen Electors on
January 6
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