She should push for being seated. We need to cram this sucker down the throats of the Republicans. They appear to believe that voting problems benefit them. If we can set up a case like FL-13 where voting problems cost them a seat, you will see bi-partisan action on paper ballots right away.

In all honesty I would rather not see a Democratic winner crammed into place by a Democratic House. Assuming that the in-Florida legal challenges do not lead to a new election, then I would say seat the Radical "winner" and immediately introduce legislation calling for all voting machines to have an auditable paper trail and open source software.

sPh

I think they should seat her, as presumably she won by about 750 votes, assuming the rate of undervote was the same in Sarasota County as in other counties (and there's certainly no reason to assume otherwise). The people voted, she won, the machines didn't work right, but that shouldn't change the results of the election.

The Dems just need to explain what happened very, very clearly to the people (and the media) and show their math very explicitly.

There were over 17,000 undervotes, there should only have been about 3,000. That means 14,000 votes were eaten by the machines. She won 54-46, which is 7560-6440 votes, i.e. 1120 additional votes for Christine Jennings, well above the 369 vote margin.

"Democrat Christine Jennings contested her 369-vote loss in the 13th District, asking a judge to order a new election because of problems in Sarasota County, where more than 17,000 voters who cast ballots in other races Nov. 7 failed to vote in the congressional contest.

That rate is nearly six times higher than in the other counties in the congressional district or on Sarasota's paper absentee ballots, Jennings alleges in her legal challenge. Though she lost in the other four counties in the district, Jennings did well in Sarasota County, winning there by a 6 percentage point margin."

I agree. The House should hold the seat vacant, pending a revote either in Sarasota County alone, or in the district as a whole, whichever.

Absolutely. Holt should use this as a club to beat the Republicans over the head while advancing the cause of election reform.

And yes, the irony is huge but more importantly it provides a resonance with the problems of 2000 and 2004. As you say, this more than a chance to just pick up a seat.

I agree with you 100% that Jennings should put her case to Congress if she feels she has a strong one and the state courts have not given it a sufficient hearing. Part of the problem with the Democrats these days is that they are too often shy of playing political hardball.

"Have faith in the voters and the process," says WindowDog. But this is the process. Article I, Section 5 of the US Constitution says, "Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members . . ." Furthermore, there is legislation on the books to guide the process, the Federal Contested Election Act of 1969.

There is a discussion of this at http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly93.asp, along with a couple of recent examples of decisions about contested elections made through this very process. Several posters here speak as if this was highly unusual, but it's actually not.The Congress has been invoking this Clause since the very first Congress in 1789, when a Representative from South Carolina was challenged on a question of whether he was actually a citizen. By way of interesting stats:

From 1789 until the mid-19th century the number of contested election cases remained stable at an average of three per Congress. After the 34th Congress (1855-57) the number of contested seats rose sporadically to a peak of 38 during the 54th Congress (1895-97). In 1895, due to the increase in workload, the committee was split into three separate committees: Elections #1, Elections #2, and Elections #3. After 1935 the number of contested elections returned to an average of three per Congress, and in 1947 the three Elections Committees were abolished and their jurisdiction included in that of the new House Administration Committee

From the National Archives Guide to House Records

There's no abuse of power in this so long as the established rules are followed; those rules place the burden of proof on the challenger to show sufficient evidence that the official results of an election should be overturned.

I'm with the folks who would rather not have a Democrat installed by the House majority. This has happened before; back in '84, IIRC, in a contested House race in Indiana, the Democrat was seated even though it looked like the Republican probably got more votes. It was one of the 'Democrat abuses of power' that Gingrich and the WSJ flogged mercilessly right up until 1994. One seat isn't worth it for how bad it would look (or would be made to look).

That said, I do think there should be a full investigation, maybe hearings and such, to publicize the problems that occurred there. Even if they end up seating the Republican, it should be made clear that his 'victory' is under a cloud.

I understand this thinking, but I really think that there needs to be some redress for past imbalances. By which I mean, I don't think we should again rely upon "well, we shouldn't do X because that would make a bad situation even worse, because the Republicans already did X". Here X could be installing a candidate or even something like impeaching the President.

Whatever the House should do, it should do it because it's the right thing to do. If there is significant evidence of error, and there seems to be that, the best thing to do here would be to have a re-vote with active supervision of the voting process.

What the House should not do is simply seat the Republican candidate, just to try to avoid "looking bad".

Election laws are mandated by the states not the federal government, so any new election would use the same Diebold machines that created the problem in the first place!

While they are at it they need to put in strict antiGerrymandering laws. The Repubs already have such a bill in California, where it has been Gerrymandered in favor of Democrats, so to take their law and nationalize it, making sure it eliminated the practice everywhere, might have a salutary effect on both parties. My one zipcode is part of 4 Cong. districts, as a whole over half vote Democrat, but the Republicans win 75% of the seats. What the Democrats would lose in California would be more than made up in Florida and Texas alone.