Vermonters urge Jeffords to challenge Electoral College results

By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian   15 December 2004

MONTPELIER ? A small delegation of Vermonters is calling on Sen. James Jeffords to refuse to certify the Electoral College vote until all ballots cast on Nov. 2 are verified.

In a letter presented Dec. 13 to Jeffords staff members in Montpelier, Vermonters for Voting Integrity called for ?a thorough investigation of all voting machine malfunctions, disclosure and investigation into all electronic voting machine software, and a full audit to disclose discrepancies between exit polls and the final vote.? The Electoral College vote occurred that same day.

President Bush declared himself the winner of the Nov. 2 poll, with 51 percent of the popular vote to challenger John Kerry?s 48 percent. After vowing to stay in the race until all votes were counted, Kerry abruptly conceded the election on Nov. 3.

Bush?s win centered on Ohio ? where widespread charges of computer miscounting, ballot spoilage and other irregularities have swirled since Election Day. The Buckeye State?s 20 Electoral College votes gave the president the 282-252 margin he needed to prevail in the winner-take-all system.

?We ask you, Sen. Jeffords, to lead our public servants in the Senate to stand strong for Democracy: Do not certify the elections of 2004 until all votes are counted,? the Vermonters? letter urges.
In Washington, Jeffords? press secretary, Diane Derby, said Dec. 14 that she could not speak directly to the request because the senator had not yet seen the letter.

Calais resident Jim Hogue of Vermonters for Voting Integrity said he?s hopeful that Jeffords will be open-minded about the issue. He noted that Jeffords sent a staff member to a little-publicized Dec. 8 House Judiciary Committee hearing on voting irregularities.

All three members of Vermont?s congressional delegation back an independent investigation of voting irregularities on Nov. 2, but none have said they would directly challenge the results.

Jeffords supports creation of a paper trail for electronic voting, and national standards for provisional ballots, Derby said. He is hopeful that ongoing challenges to the 2004 election, including lawsuits, a recount in Ohio and a study by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office ?will get to the heart of some of the concerns and questions,? she added.

?He has been pretty consistent that reform and clarification of existing law needs to be passed by Congress,? Derby said. She refused to speculate on whether he would agree to directly challenge the 2004 results.

Congress is scheduled to meet in joint session on Jan. 6 to officially tally the Electoral College votes, according to the college?s website. As president of the Senate, Vice President Dick Cheney will preside. Any objections to the vote may be registered at that time, but they must be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member of the House and Senate.

A spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy said he would not challenge the certification on Jan. 6. ?That wouldn?t change the results,? said David Carle, Leahy?s spokesman in Washington, ?it would only prompt a discussion.?

?The Electoral College has met and the results have been officially counted,? Carle said. ?Sen. Leahy believes we need to continue to push to find the problems that prevented every vote from being counted and to learn from those mistakes. He strongly supports the Government Accountability Office?s investigation into the problems in Ohio and other states that clouded this election.?

Congressman Bernie Sanders, I-VT, was among 14 members of Congress who asked the GAO for an urgent investigation of the 2004 election results, Sanders? spokesman said.

In Michael Moore?s controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, film footage of the 2000 congressional count shows one member after another of the Congressional Black Caucus pleading for just one senator to step forward and question certification of that election. No one did.

About 20 protesters gathered in Montpelier to insist that elected officials refuse to certify the Electoral College until all votes are counted.

?Even though new evidence of voter suppression and potential fraud has surfaced almost every day since the election (and in the weeks and months leading up to it), these stories are rarely covered by the mainstream press,? the protesters wrote to Jeffords. ?We ask that you inform yourself beyond the bounds of corporate media and take action, in the interest of preserving Democracy in the United States,? the letter continued.

Activist Rene? Carpenter of Montpelier said she had a ?very cordial? conversation with a staff member from Jeffords? Washington office later in the day.

Michigan Sen. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, held a hearing on the issue Dec. 8 in Washington and another forum Dec. 13 in Ohio, where what began as a 136,483-vote margin for Bush on Election Day later fell to 118,775 after the counting of absentee and provisional ballots.

In a press release on Dec. 12, Conyers charged that an audit of poll records in Green County, OH, had been obstructed by county election officials ?and/or Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell? after election officials abruptly withdrew access to county voting records by a pair of election observers researching the records.

On Dec. 3, Conyers wrote to Blackwell, a Republican, demanding answers to 32 questions about at least 14 procedural and vote-count irregularities, including a Franklin County computerized voting machine that recorded 4,258 votes Bush and 260 for Kerry in a precinct where 638 people voted.
Kerry's campaign also has reportedly asked for permission to visually check 92,000 Ohio ballots that had no vote for president.

According to the pro-democracy People for the American Way, voting irregularities were widespread nationally. In North Carolina, 4,438 votes were lost in one county due to computer problems. In Texas, one precinct had to ship a frozen election computer to Canada to get a tally. And police in Cook County, IL allegedly waited outside a polling station, demanding photo IDs from would-be voters and warning them not to vote if they had a felony conviction, the group reports.

At the Dec. 8 hearing on Capitol Hill, the Rev. Jesse Jackson reportedly drew repeated applause when called for a standardized national voting process to take the matter out of the hands of individual states, which he said can keep the process "separate and unequal."