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01/03/2005:

"Is There One Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?"

by Dave Lindorff
Perhaps the most powerful moment in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9-11" was the stony silence in the hall of the joint session of Congress as a line of African- American and other non-white representatives stood up and pleaded for just one senator to issue an official challenge to the Florida electoral college delegation and its vote in favor of candidate George Bush.

This Thursday, we are destined to have a repeat of that dramatic event.

Congressman John Conyers, (D-Michigan), the representative who has chaired hearings into the Republican-led efforts in Ohio to keep people from registering, to keep voters from voting, and to mess with the vote totals to keep the vote for Democrat John Kerry as low as possible-in short the "vote suppression" effort that was deliberately made over the course not just of election day but of the months leading up to the balloting--has vowed to challenge the state's delegation to the Electoral College.

Under the Constitution, it requires only one representative and one senator to initiate a challenge, which would then mandate an official inquiry into the state's election, and delay certification of the national presidential election results.

While it is unlikely, with a Congress firmly in the hands of the Republican Party, with the attorney general's office packed with Bush appointees, and with the FBI run by Republican party hacks, that any serious effort would be made to find out what actually happened in Ohio, such an investigation would at least serve to embarrass Republican officials, and to undermine the ludicrous Bush claim of a mandate for his second term of office.
Full Article: counterpunch.org