Lost in the Democratic euphoria over the passage of H.R. 3962, the House health care bill, is that the 220-215 vote was aided by two House members hastily sworn in after special elections earlier in the week. Moreover, the lone Republican who voted for the bill, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, only did so once the magic 218 vote threshold was passed. Had his vote been necessary to get to 218, it’s not clear whether he would have bucked his party.
In practice, most members of Congress are elected in November and sworn in the next January, leaving plenty of time for local election boards to have the races certified and assure the people’s choice is indeed going to Washington. But in this case neither Bill Owens, winner of the New York-23 election over Doug Hoffman nor John Garamendi of California had their election certified before being sworn in.
In Garamendi’s case, the margin of victory was insurmountable and the result won’t change. But Hoffman conceded the race on election night based on faulty information from two counties in the wide-ranging New York district. Given the counting errors which went against Hoffman and the thousands of absentee ballots which hadn’t been counted (or even received from far-flung military personnel stationed out of Fort Drum), there is a slight chance that the wrong person took the oath of office just in time to cast his vote for the Democrats’ bill.
Even if the New York-23 result doesn’t change, the practice of hurriedly adding members to the House in order to help assure bill passage does a disservice to the integrity of the process. There wasn’t the rush for the Senate to swear in Norm Coleman of Minnesota based on initial election results – as we found out, seemingly every break went Al Franken’s way and eventually it was ruled he had the higher vote total. So far the New York-23 count seems to be placing Doug Hoffman in Franken’s role.
While Democrats argued that Hoffman conceded the race on election night, recent history shows a case where a candidate for office conceded, then unconceded when he learned about alleged election irregularities. Recall how Al Gore fought the Florida results all the way to the Supreme Court, even after they were certified by the state.
Without the two new House members and Cao’s vote in favor, suddenly we have a situation where one vote literally makes a difference. No one would want to be known as the deciding vote for a bill that’s less than popular along the electorate at large, so it’s even questionable that Pelosi would bring a vote forward without an assured majority. She had a difficult time holding the Democrats she had without being short two votes.
Because they run the show in Washington, Democrats have been nearly ruthless in their quest for absolute power, even arranging to change state law in Massachusetts to quickly assure themselves the magic 60-seat majority in the Senate after the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Yet Democrats are the first to challenge election integrity when they find themselves on the short end of a close election. Certainly there is the occasional case where they are correct, but more often it’s a ploy to impose their will through the courts rather than fairly at the ballot box. If Doug Hoffman was the rightful winner in New York-23, it serves to bring up the question whether Democrats are more interested in maintaining the integrity of the electoral system or gaming it to achieve their own ends.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
The latest LFS contribution of mine cleared back on November 23rd.
