The Hill reports the findings of the House panel created to investigate the scandalous falsification of a House floor vote in August 2007:
The House’s Aug. 2, 2007, “Stolen Vote” committee released its findings on Thursday, concluding that the result of controversial roll call vote 814, which the Democrats won, was incorrect.
And while the report, which the panel adopted 6-0, found a great deal of fault to go around, it fell short of admonishing any individual members, including Rep. Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.), who was presiding over the House during the vote, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who had admitted in testimony to the committee that it was “certainly possible” that he helped create an atmosphere in which McNulty felt pressure to close the vote sooner than he might have otherwise.
The report dodged the question of who was ultimately responsible for the calling of the vote on the motion to recommit the Agriculture appropriations bill at 212-216, handing the Democrats a victory. . . The committee agreed that McNulty failed to follow proper procedures of waiting for the “tally sheet” from the clerks, and concurred with Hoyer’s admission that he may have brought undue pressure onto the situation. But it called for no punitive action for any member.
The panel did reach the unanimous conclusion, however, that the 212-216 vote was incorrect.
“There may be a disagreement about what should be the final vote tally, but one fact is indisputable: The vote tally of 212 yeas and 216 nays that was finally announced is incorrect,” the report read. “It is either 215 yeas and 213 nays, which would have reflected the tally at the time the chair prematurely announced the statement of result, or 211 yeas and 217 nays, which would have reflected the tally had [Minority Leader John] Boehner’s [R-Ohio] well card been processed.”
As expected, this is a whitewash. There’s no question about the correct result; the public tally showed that the motion was leading as McNulty gaveled the vote closed. The Democratic leadership refused to honor the result, and prevailed on several members to change their vote overnight after the vote was over. House majority leader Hoyer went so far as to lecture the protesting parliamentarian, “We control this house, not the parliamentarian.”
Also, the article doesn’t report anything about why the voting system was turned off after the vote and its electronic results erased. Was that even investigated?
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