New Congress Could Get Ugly Start

It looks like the squabble over the race on Florida's 13th Congressional District might be headed for Congressional action. Christine Jennings, who lost the race, lost the recount, and who many experts feel has no legitimate case, is set to petition the incoming Democratic House to refuse to accept the results of the election:

Democrat Christine Jennings was in Washington over the last two days renewing her call for a revote in her race against Rep.-elect Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), as government and independent reviews failed to support her case.

Jennings said she would do everything she could to see the legal challenge through. She set up shop at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters and was to meet with lawmakers including Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) and Rush Holt (D-N.J.). She was also asking for financial support and continuing to push her case to the news media...

The audit has yet to produce any evidence of machine errors, and a review by a local newspaper published Tuesday points to ballot design as the leading cause of the undervotes...

Jennings’s case was also undercut by a review of every Sarasota County ballot conducted by investigative reporters at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and published Tuesday. The review concluded that the format of the ballot probably contributed to the large undervote, and a number of election experts are now also saying ballot design was probably the leading factor.

The Herald-Tribune review found that three other counties experienced similar undervotes in the two-candidate attorney general race. The attorney general race was on the same page as the gubernatorial race in those counties, just like the two-candidate House race was in Sarasota County.

The gubernatorial race featured seven options and therefore dominated the screen in the four counties, which all used the same touch screens. The four cases all led to undervotes of more than 10 percent and account for four of the five highest undervotes in federal and statewide races in Florida, according to the Herald-Tribune...

Roll Call (subscription only) covers the issue, and looks more closely at the ramifications:

...Filing an official protest with the House Administration Committee will automatically make the Jennings/Buchanan case one of the first indicators of just how partisan the 110th Congress will be, and observers won’t even have to wait until the new year to begin to see the fissures.

Here’s why: The House of Representatives as a whole is responsible for seating its own membership. Buchanan supporters argue that since he holds a certificate from the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission showing that he won the race, he should be installed as the Representative of Florida’s 13th district on Jan. 4, when the 110th Congress convenes...

It is not unprecedented for neither candidate to be seated by the House until a contested election is resolved. Perhaps the most notable example in recent years is the infamous 1984 race between the late Democratic Rep. Frank McCloskey and Republican Richard McIntyre in Indiana’s 8th district — where it took until the following May to swear in a Member for that seat. McCloskey eventually was seated by a Democratic House...

The House Administration Committee will receive Jennings’ challenge at the tail end of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress and the outgoing majority could immediately begin the investigation or hold hearings on the case.

Traditionally when an election contest is filed, a panel of two majority and one minority committee members is put together to review the case, including reports gathered by both Democratic and Republican committee observers who are sent to districts whenever contests seem likely. That panel makes a recommendation to the full committee on how to proceed, and that recommendation is voted on and, if passed, sent to the floor of the House and treated like any other piece of legislation...

As I've noted before, refereeing a race like this can be very ugly. I'll be watching to see where this goes.

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