A historic day.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

Thank God for Barbara Boxer! In agreeing to challenge the Ohio tally at the Electoral College, Boxer joined what she called "the fight for electoral justice."

It's a fight that grassroots groups have been waging for years, demanding uniform standards, paper trails, and other reforms, such as instant runoff voting.

Praise to David Cobb, the Presidential candidate of the Greens, who was instrumental in challenging the vote count, with a helping hand from Air America, Harvey Wasserman, and other muckraking journalists.

Praise to Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Representative John Conyers for leading this battle in the House. The investigation that Conyers headed up, as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, lent great credibility to this issue.

"We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio Presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters," said the report of the Democratic Judiciary staff: "Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousands of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards."

And praise to all the House members who had the courage to stand up and denounce the low-down Republican tactics that were disenfranchising predominantly African American voters.

When Representative John Lewis, hero of the civil rights movement, stood up and said, "Our electoral system is broken. There is something wrong in our democracy," only the most hardhearted could not be affected.

But there were plenty of white Republicans showing off their hard hearts. And they were filled with scorn and condescension and dismissiveness.

There was Tom DeLay, hardest of them all, denouncing the "irresponsible tactics" of the...