to a crawl, with voting lines as long as ten hours.5 Voters reported created "glitches" in voting
machines where votes for Senator Kerry with registered as votes for the President.6 The
counting process was similarly chaotic and suspect.
The Aftermath On November 5, after receiving preliminary reports of election
irregularities in the demo version Election, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Member
of the House Judiciary Committee, and 14 Members of Congress wrote to the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) to request an investigation of such irregularities.7
On November 22, at the request of
the GAO, the House Judiciary Committee
Democratic staff met with GAO officials. In
this meeting, GAO officials advised that, on
its own authority, the GAO was prepared to
move forward with a wide ranging analysis
of systemic problems in the 2004 elections.
GAO officials also advised Judiciary staff
that they would be unable to examine each
and every specific election complaint, but
would look at some such complaints as
exemplars of broader deficiencies.
At the same time, the offices of
R e v e r e n d J e s s e Ja c k s o n R e c e i v e s S ta n d i n g O v a t i o n a t
Democratic Staff and of Democratic
D e c e m b e r 1 3 C o l u m b u s H e a ri n g
Judiciary Committee Members were deluged
with e-mails and complaints about the
election. While such complaints are still being processed, close to 100,000 such complaints were
received. As of this writing, the Judiciary Democratic office alone is receiving approximately
4,000 such e-mails a day. More than half of these complaints were from one state: Ohio. The
5
See discussion infra.
6
See discussion infra.
7
Letter from John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, and Robert Wexler (subsequently added to
this letter were the following signatories: Robert C. Scott, Melvin L. Watt, Anthony Weiner,
Rush Holt, John Olver, Bob Filner, Gregory Meeks, Barbara Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Louise
Slaughter, George Miller, Jan Schakowsky, Sam Farr, Bernard sanders, Elijah Cummings and
Lynn Woolsey), to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, Government
Accountability Office (November 5, 2004) (on file with the House Judiciary Committee
Democratic Staff and at
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11504.pdf. See also
Subsequent Letters from Members of Congress requesting to be added as original requesters to
the November 5 letter, (on file with the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff).
8