With ballots were being counted by hand, results were expected to be announced in one week. The vote likely will give the assembly a younger, fresher face. Only a fifth of the outgoing assembly members sought re-election. The New York Times on 21 July reported that a pitched battle between Republicans and Democrats over a contested election for a Louisiana seat in the Senate dramatizes how difficult it is for Congress to settle such fights. The House and Senate rarely have to arbitrate contested elections.
Easy solutions are rarer still.
Witness the melee over the challenge by Republican Woody Jenkins to the seating of the Democratic victor in Louisiana, Sen. Mary Landrieu. Reuters on 20 July reported that four small Jordanian opposition parties said on Sunday they were pulling out of parliamentary elections planned for November. They said they were heeding the call for a boycott made by the influential Moslem Brotherhood to protest government steps since 1993 elections which the opposition say have sidelined parliament. The four parties involved, who do not hold a parliamentary seat between them, are the Jordanian People's Democratic Party, the Jordanian Arab Constitutional Party, the National Labour Front and the Arab Jordanian Ansar Party. Agence France-Presse on 20 July reported that Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic has been thrown out of the hardline Serb Democratic Party and called on to resign, Bosnian Serb officials announced.