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Congress Confirms Bush As President After Contentious Session
By Charles Hoskinson
WASHINGTON (AFP) - George W. Bush was officially declared winner of the 2000 U.S. presidential election Saturday after Electoral College votes were counted and certified by Congress in a contentious session featuring a walkout by black lawmakers.
Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who won a majority of the popular vote in the bitterly contested November 7th election, announced the result in his capacity as U.S. Senate president, giving Bush 271 electoral votes to his 266, with one abstention.
Bush's running mate Dick Cheney was declared vice president-elect by the same number of votes over Democrat Joe Lieberman.
"I am honored," Bush said in Texas as the lawmakers gathered.
"It's a humbling experience to become the president of this great land. And I want to reiterate what I said before: I'm going to be the president of everybody, whether they supported me or not. And people need to know that; people need to know that this is going to be an administration that will make decisions on what's best for America."
The 538 electoral votes were cast December 18th in the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia, the federal capital. Each state's vote was read and counted in alphabetical order in the joint session of Congress.
A dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus walked out of the mostly-empty House chamber as the votes were tallied after Gore rejected their contest to the 25 electoral votes from the southeastern state of Florida.
Gore was the first presidential candidate in 112 years to win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote, coming within a few hundred votes of winning Florida, where victory would have allowed him to lock up the entire U.S. presidential election.
But the vice president was forced to concede the November 7th election some five weeks later, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow a recount of contested ballots in several disputed Florida localities.
He became the first U.S. vice president to preside over vote counting, sealing his own defeat, since Richard Nixon in 1961 certified that his opponent, John Kennedy, had won the presidency.
Ironically, it was Gore who overruled challenges to the contested vote in Florida raised by members of the House of Representatives, because objections had not been signed by a member of the Senate.
At a news conference after Saturday's event, Representative Carrie Meek, a Florida Democrat, said: "All that's left for us now as the Congressional Black Caucus and as citizens of this country is to exercise our First Amendment right while we still have it and before it is further undermined by a politically dominated Supreme Court."
And congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson from Dallas, Texas said she was still "waiting for Mr. Bush to reach out to the Congressional Black Caucus."
"If he truly wants to reach out, and make this a priority - voting reform - then we can truly work with him," she said.
"We are chagrined, unhappy, and frustrated today, because we know who won, by the voters, to go to the White House. We will continue to object to the election procedures until they are corrected."
Earlier, Peter Deutsch, another Democratic representative from Florida, was ruled out of order when he called for a quorum.
In all, 13 Democratic representatives - most of them members of the black caucus - objected to Florida's votes. However, none was able to gain support among the 100 senators for an objection to delay the count.
"It's a sad day in America when we can't find a senator to sign these objections," Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois said, as Gore repeatedly pounded his gavel to silence him.
Gore kept a tight rein on the process, cutting off in mid-sentence members who complained about alleged irregularities in the Florida vote and the Supreme Court's ruling.
The exchanges were punctuated by both impatience and humor, as proceedings were delayed by approximately 20 minutes.
Gore audibly sighed at one point when Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia rose a second time to object.
And to Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida, Gore laughed and said, "This is going to sound familiar to you," before rejecting his objection a second time.
"We did all we could," Hastings responded.
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