    [House Hearing, 110 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    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:
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                       COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION

                    ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, Chairman
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
      Vice Chairwoman                      Ranking Minority Member
    MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts    DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
    CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas           KEVIN McCARTHY, California
    SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
    ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama
                     S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, Staff Director
                     Will Plaster, Minority Staff Director

                                    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 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.
        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.
        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
    thefuture 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 reliability 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:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2797.001

        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.
        The bill provides the new Office of Congressional
    Accessibility Service with its own budget and
    operatingauthority 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:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2797.041

        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.]