House Democrats to Object to Florida Election Outcome

By Kate Zernike
The New York Times

Saturday 30 December 2006

Washington - Democrats said Friday that they would open the new Congress by formally objecting to the election result in Florida's 13th District, in the hope that the Democrat who is contesting the narrow outcome there will ultimately take the place of the Republican whom the state has certified as the winner.

The move will not prevent the Republican, Vern Buchanan, from taking office with the rest of the 110th Congress next Thursday. But Democrats say that because the House is the final certifier of House election results, they want to make certain that Mr. Buchanan's swearing-in does not prejudice a legal challenge mounted by his opponent, Christine Jennings.

The Democrats say that if they were to make no such objection, formally called a parliamentary inquiry, they would essentially be signaling the courts that the House agreed with the state-certified result. By contrast, their move will put the House on record as supporting Ms. Jennings's challenge.

That move requires no House vote, only the approval of the chair, presumably Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who is to become speaker next week.

"No one who's in a disputed election like this should get too comfortable in the House of Representatives," Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, said in announcing the new majority's plan on Friday. "The evidence will show that a revote is necessary."

The race between Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Jennings, for a Sarasota-area seat held until now by Representative Katherine Harris, a Republican, was one of the closest in a Congressional election that featured several recounts and challenged outcomes. On Nov. 20, the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission, made up of Gov. Jeb Bush and two other Republicans, declared Mr. Buchanan the winner by 369 votes.

But Ms. Jennings, and some voters, have complained of irregularities. Paperless electronic voting machines used in the district recorded a significant percentage of what are known as "undervotes": some 18,000 ballots, or about 15 percent of the total cast in the district, registered votes in races for other offices but not in the House contest.

In some counties in the district, there was an undervote of 25 percent or more, Mr. Holt said, and in one area an undervote of 38 percent.

In contrast, he said, the undervote among absentee ballots was only 2.5 percent.

"Something was wrong there," the congressman said.

Mr. Buchanan has criticized Ms. Jennings's challenge as an effort to delay the elections process, calling it "frivolous," "disappointing" and "regrettable." A Buchanan spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment Friday.

Ms. Jennings has said she intends to take a seat that is rightfully hers, and she even attended freshman orientation for new House members in November. Legal filings on her behalf say she would have won by 3,000 votes if the tallies had been done properly.

Her campaign suffered a setback Friday, however, when a Florida circuit judge ruled that she could not examine the programming code of the electronic voting machines used in the election. The judge, William Gary, said her arguments about the possibility of undervotes were "conjecture" and did not warrant disclosing the trade secrets of Election Systems & Software, a voting machine company.

The Jennings campaign said it would appeal.

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