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42–797 2008

H. RES. 989, DISMISSING THE ELECTION CONTEST 

RELATING TO THE OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM THE THIRTEENTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF FLORIDA; AND MARKUP OF H.R. 

5159, THE CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER ACT 

OF 2008 

MEETING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, FEBRUARY 12, 2008 

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/administration/index.html 


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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

Vice Chairwoman 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

Ranking Minority Member 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

KEVIN MCCARTHY, California 

S. ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM, Staff Director 

WILL PLASTER, Minority Staff Director 


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MEETING 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 5:17 p.m., in room 1310, 

Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert A. Brady (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Brady, Lofgren, Capuano, Gonzalez, 

Ehlers, Lungren, and McCarthy. 

Staff Present: Liz Birnbaum, Staff Director; Thomas Hicks, Senior Election Counsel; Janelle Hu, Election Counsel; Matt Pinkus, 

Professional Staff/Parliamentarian; Ellen McCarthy, Professional 

Staff; Kyle Anderson, Press Director; Kristin McCowan, Chief Legislative Clerk; Daniel Favarulo, Legislative Assistant, Elections; 

William Plaster, Minority Staff Director; Fred Hay, Minority General Counsel; and Bryan T. Dorsey, Minority Professional Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to call this meeting of the House Administration Committee to order. As we gather here today, I want 

to take a moment to point out the latest editions to our committee 

hearing room, several portraits, acknowledge several previous 

chairs of the committee. 

If we start on my righthand side in chronological order, at the 

further end of the room, you will see a portrait of Samuel Nathaniel Friedel of Maryland. He served in the House from 1953 to 1971. 

Congressman Friedel served as Chairman of the committee in the 

90th and 91st Congress. 

Here, closer to the dais, is the portrait of Congressman Charlie 

Rose of North Carolina. Congressman Rose served in the House 

from 1973 to 1997 and served as chairman of the committee in the 

102nd and 103rd Congress. 

On my left, is the portrait of Congressman Bill Thomas of California. He served in the House from 1979 to 2007. Chairman 

Thomas served as chairman of this committee 104th, 105th and 

106th Congress. 

In front of me, directly in front of me and behind the audience, 

we find a picture of Chairwoman Juanita Millender-McDonald of 

California. She served in the House between 1996 and 2007. She 

also served briefly at the opening of the 110th Congress as the first 

African-American chairwoman of the committee before her untimely passing. Her family has loaned the committee this official 

portrait of her for the remainder of the Congress. 

Today we will have two items of business today. The first item 

of business, will be to receive a report by the chairman of the task 


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force on the election contest in the 13th District of Florida, Representative Gonzalez. 

I would also like to thank personally Representatives Gonzalez 

and Lofgren for their hard work on overseeing matters related to 

the Florida 13 contest and investigation of the 18,000 overvote of 

Sarasota County, Florida. I would also like to thank Representative 

McCarthy and both the majority and minority staffs for their efforts with this investigation. Lastly, I would like to thank the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, for providing technical assistance to the task force and the House recording studio for assisting with the video recording of the GAO testing conducted in Florida. 

Chairman Gonzalez, I would like to reserve my time to have you 

make some opening remarks regarding the work of the task force. 

Mr. GONZALEZ. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate you allowing me this opportunity to go forward. And I am 

going to be very, very brief because, obviously, since the task force 

met and voted to make this particular recommendation that is before the full committee today, some days have passed, and obviously there are many people that are making comments regarding 

the work of the General Accountability Office. And that is to be expected. 

First and foremost, I would hope that people will keep in mind 

that the task force was really charged with a very specific obligation, and that was: to investigate and keep a very narrow focus on 

the central allegation of the contestant’s notice of contest that the 

electronic voting machines malfunctioned. That is all we did. GAO 

was not charged with the responsibility of establishing as to what 

may have caused the 18,000 vote undervote in Sarasota, which was 

an anomaly given the fact that there wasn’t anything of that nature or that degree in any of the other counties comprising the 

Congressional District Florida 13. 

Further, there was no—again, to the degree or to the extent of 

the undervote was not reflected in the absentee ballots filed in 

Sarasota, which obviously did not utilize the ES&S electronic voting devices. So there was a legitimate controversy. But we knew 

from the beginning that it truly was a question of the alleged malfunctioning of electronic voting devices. And that is what GAO was 

charged with. And that is the assistance that they gave us. 

It would have been a wonderful, wonderful achievement if we 

could have accounted and given some basis or some reason through 

the scientific process as to why there was that undervote. I cannot 

give you that answer. We can speculate that, again, maybe the voters were totally turned off. But I don’t think—and common sense 

mitigates against any kind of reasoning—that 18,000 individuals 

decided not to vote when in fact that wasn’t reflected in the adjoining counties nor in the absentee ballots. 

So we would look then at ballot design, but that is an open question. And the jury is still out on that, and there will be work done 

on that. So I am hoping that we will be able to proceed 

unencumbered by any further observations as to that we weren’t 

able to give the specific answers to the undervote. That truly was 

not our charge. It was not our obligation. And it wasn’t the goal 

of the General Accountability Office. 


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And with that, Mr. Chairman, again, thank you, and of course, 

I am here if you have any questions or other members of the full 

committee. 

And I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you Mr. Gonzalez. 

Are there any other members who wish to be recognized for 

statements? 

Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for calling this meeting. One of the items on the agenda today is consideration of the final report from the election task force in the contest 

in Florida’s 13th District. I did not formally sit on the task force, 

but I attended several of the meetings. And frankly, I was extremely impressed with the manner in which the process was handled both inside this room for public meetings and in private briefings between the GAO and the task force. 

And much of the credit for that belongs to the two gentlemen sitting here. First, Mr. Gonzalez as chair handled it very, very professionally. And I was very pleased to see that. And also, Mr. McCarthy on our side of the aisle was extremely responsible in his approach and his comments. And it is a good example of how the 

process should work in situations like this. 

During my years in Congress, I have seen several of these cases 

become extremely contentious, and it was not good. The level of 

professionalism, integrity and bipartisanship set by Congressman 

Gonzalez and as countered by on the Republican side Representative McCarthy serves as a model for all similar proceedings in the 

future. And since all of these are cataloged and maintained by 

CRS, it is very important that we keep the history of this accurate 

so that later others can follow the same model. 

Each of the committee members have participated in a civil 

measured tone from the beginning of the process to the final report 

we have with us today. And I thank the task force for their good 

work. 

Also on today’s agenda is the markup of legislation H.R. 5159, 

the Capitol Visitor Center Act of 2008. This is the largest extension 

of the Capitol in its 212-year history and approximately 3⁄4 of the 

size of the Capitol itself. With a project of this size, it is essential 

that we maintain a vigorous and effective oversight of its operations. This bill will ensure effective management and administration of the Capitol Visitor Center through the creation of an office 

within the Office of the Architect of the Capitol with the oversight 

by this committee and Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. 

I look forward to continuing our oversight activities with you, 

Mr. Chairman, over the CVC as we near November 2008, opening 

date and beyond. I might add that whenever the Architect of the 

Capitol has given me a date for opening the CVC, I have always 

added a year. I think we are at the point now where it may be that 

you can only add 3 to 6 months and we will be on target. 

With that, I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Anybody else have any—Mr. McCarthy. 


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Mr. MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to, one, publicly 

thank Mr. Gonzalez because the way he chaired the task force and 

the way he handled himself throughout. Every issue that came before it, we took the politics out of it. It was unanimous decisions 

from the start to the finish as we went through. And I think one 

of the jobs we were asked to do was to work for the trust of the 

American people to find out if their votes were honest and accurate. In the end we found through more study than this committee 

in the history has ever done, that yes, every vote that was taken 

that day of the election, during that election, was counted and the 

outcome was correct. And the way that we went about finding that 

answer I think was a pattern that history will show is the way to 

go about it. And I did want to thank Mr. Gonzalez for the work he 

has done. And I yield back. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lungren. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Mr. Chairman, although I was not a member of 

the task force, I was privileged to sit in on most of the meetings 

and observe the actions, but also the chairman of the task force 

was kind enough to allow me to ask questions and actually participate. And I appreciate that. I would also like to underscore the professional way in which the task force went about their business. I 

have been here at other times when we had a certain amount of 

bitterness that resulted from the way a contest was taking place. 

This goes back some 20 years. This was exactly the opposite of 

that. There was cooperation. There was bipartisanship. There was 

an effort by the chairman to ensure there was a unanimous vote, 

I believe, on every single question that came forward. That is the 

way to do this in an otherwise very contentious situation. And I 

want to make sure that the record is clear that not only was this 

done right this time, but it provides an example of how we should 

do this in the future if this comes up. 

I would also like to refer to page 3 of the report, paragraph 3, 

where it says: No further action was taken by the courts or the 

parties over the following 5 months, and the contestant withdrew 

a challenge in the Florida courts on November 26, 2007. 

I just want to make sure there is no indication by that statement 

that somehow the courts acted inappropriately; they didn’t go forward or anything. It appeared to me that parties, both parties 

didn’t move forward at that point in time or take action. So I didn’t 

find anything that suggested that the courts acted inappropriately 

or slowed things down. I just wanted to make sure that at least my 

interpretation of that statement is part of the record. And once 

again, I thank the gentleman from Texas. He proved himself to be 

a judge in the best sense of the word. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Capuano. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to echo my thanks to 

the chairman and the members of the commission. I know it is a 

difficult task, one that I wanted nothing to do with. And I am glad 

that they did it and came up with something that we can all embrace. At the same time, I want to underscore something in my 

mind very clear, nothing in this investigation provided any real reVerDate Aug 31 2005 06:48 Jul 09, 2008 Jkt 042797 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\C797.XXX C797

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liability on behalf of the American people that the next election 

won’t be screwed up because we don’t have any paper ballots to follow. 

I don’t think anything in this review indicates anything other 

than we still need to change our laws to require paper ballots so 

that the next time there is a recount, which there will be at every 

level of government, that the recount can be relied upon as being 

accurate and that there will be no questions left at the end. In this 

particular case, there were no questions about the machine. But 

there are no answers about the 18,000 votes. So be it, that is the 

way it is in this particular case. But we are not doing our job for 

America if we let this situation continue over the long run. I understand fully well it would be inappropriate and impossible to do it 

for this election cycle. Nonetheless, I hope this committee and 

members of this House continue working towards trying to find a 

way to get us to paper ballots so that all of America and each 

American can rely on the fact that their votes will be counted as 

we intend. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Any other members? I now call up an original resolution relating 

to the election contest in the 13th District of Florida, the text of 

which is before the members. 

[The information follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And without objection, the first reading of the 

resolution will be dispensed with, and the resolution shall be considered as read and open for amendment at any time. 

Do any members wish to speak further before we proceed to consideration of the motion of the report? 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas for the purpose of making a motion. 

Mr. GONZALEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would move 

that the committee order reported favorably to the House an original resolution, the text of which is before us, to dismiss the election 

contest in the 13th District of Florida. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

The question is on the motion by the gentleman from Texas. 

Yes, Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Republican staff, as 

I mentioned to you privately, has just been made aware of the majority’s intention to include a very long list of articles and other appendices in the report to be filed with the House. Our staffs have 

worked very cooperatively through this whole election contest, and 

we generally agree with the draft report language. However, we 

have not had an opportunity to read the content of these articles 

and other appendices to be included. And we reserve the right to 

include minority views in the final report to the House. As I mentioned to you privately earlier, we would be happy to work together 

with the majority and try to develop the unified document, which 

I think would be ideal, but in case we cannot agree to that, we reserve the right to include minority views. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

The question is on the motion by the gentleman from Texas. All 

in favor say aye. Any opposed? 

The ayes have it, unanimous. And without objection, the motion 

to reconsider is laid upon the table. The resolution is reported to 

the House. The members will have 2 additional days provided by 

the House Rules to file minority views. 

Now we will take up H.R. 5159, the Capitol Visitor Center Act 

of 2008. The next order of business will be consideration of H.R. 

5159, the Capitol Visitor Center Act of 2008. 

I recognize myself for an opening statement. When the Capitol 

Visitor Center opens at the end of this year, it will provide even 

more opportunity for visitors to the Capitol to learn about the Capitol, the Constitution and the work of Congress. With the opening 

of the CVC, we expect more than 3 million guests each year. 

H.R. 5159 is an administrative bill providing necessary authorization for the CEO of Visitor Services to operate the CVC. While 

the CEO will have a separate budget and operating authority, she 

must coordinate with the Police Board on matters affecting Capitol 

security. The bill provides for gift shops, restaurants and catering, 

and establishes revolving funds to support this operation. 

The bill will also move the Capitol Guide Service into the CVC 

once we have a certificate of occupancy for the building. While the 

Guide Service will run from the CVC, the Office of Special Services, 

which provides assistance to disabled Members, staff and visitors, 

will become a separate entity. 


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The bill provides the new Office of Congressional Accessibility 

Service with its own budget and operating authority to be overseen 

by the Police Board. In both the Guide Service and the Office of 

Special Services, we are ensuring that everyone retains their existing job, seniority, rate of pay and benefits. No existing employees 

of the Guide Service will be let go or subject to a probationary period as a result of these changes. With the enactment of this bill, 

we will be able to look forward to the opening of the CVC as a fully 

functioning operation. I would now like to recognize the ranking 

member, Mr. Ehlers, cosponsor of this bill, for an opening statement. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have little to add. I 

have no difficulty relating to the amendments. In fact, I support 

them, and I support the bill as well. My only regret, Mr. Chairman, 

is that we didn’t pass something like that a couple years ago. It 

wasn’t for a lack of trying. But there were certain obstacles, not on 

our side of the rotunda. But I am glad we have managed to overcome those and we have a good—I think we are setting up here a 

very good system for governing the CVC. 

With that, I will yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Any other statements? Anybody else have any comments? 

The Chair now calls up before the committee H.R. 5159. Without 

objection, the first reading of the bill will be dispensed with. And 

without objection, the bill will be considered as read and open to 

amendments at any point. 

[The information follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I would now like to offer technical amendments 

en bloc which are before the members. 

Without objection, the amendments en bloc are considered as 

having been read. 

The first two of these amendments provide reassurance that the 

bill does not affect other provisions of the existing law. The final 

three items correct drafting errors in the bill. Is there any debate 

on the amendments? Without question, the amendments are agreed 

to. Are there further amendments? 

[Information follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. If not, the chair recognizes the vice chair for the 

purpose of offering a motion. I also would like to recognize Mr. 

Capuano to be next in line for offering a motion which is being 

given to you. And we are in dangerous territory here. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Chairman, I move the committee report the 

bill, H.R. 5159, as amended, favorably to the House. 

The CHAIRMAN. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? 

The ayes have it unanimously. The motion is agreed to without 

objection. The motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. And the 

bill as amended will be reported to the House. 

Are there any other views? Any other comments? 

Yes, Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. I just wanted to commend our substitute vice chair 

for the direct manner in which he handled that motion. 

The CHAIRMAN. He is not done yet I don’t think. 

Mr. EHLERS. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Capuano. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Chairman, for the record, I know the answer. 

But just for the record, I want to make it clear that there is nothing in this bill and even as amended that would in any way prohibit or prevent staff tours from taking place in and around the 

CVC, and I presume that’s accurate. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is. Without objection, staff is authorized to 

make technical changes to H.R. 5159. There being no further business, the committee stands adjourned. Thank you all. 

[Whereupon, at 5:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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