When Congress met to tally the results of the 2004 presidential election, then-Sen. Barbara Boxer [Dem-CA] stood alone on the Senate floor to object to President George W. Bush's reelection victory in Ohio over Democrat John Kerry, forcing the House and Senate to vote for only the second time in a century on whether to reject a state's Electoral College votes.

It's the same scenario that could play out next month with President Donald Trump publicly urging his supporters in Congress to object to President-elect Joe Biden's victory in battleground states that expanded mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. A group of House Republicans is preparing to object, and they need at least one senator to join them to force the chambers to vote on the matter. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Senate Republicans to steer clear, several senators have declined to rule out taking part, and incoming GOP Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has left open the possibility he will join the effort.

Democrats and even some Republicans are warning against a challenge, despite the precedent laid by Boxer. In an interview with CNN, Boxer said that the circumstances are totally different this year, when Trump and his allies are seeking to overturn a national election result, than when she joined with then-Ohio Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones to object to Kerry's loss.

In order to force a vote to challenge a state's election results, however, a senator must join with a member of Congress in writing to object to the results. McConnell, who has recognized Biden's victory, has warned his conference not to join the House GOP effort and force the Senate GOP conference to take a politically toxic vote on whether they're siding with Trump or not.

It's the same position that former Vice President Al Gore faced in 2001 following his razor-thin loss to Bush that came down to a disputed recount in Florida. During that vote, House Democrats protested the Florida result, but no senator objected, and the effort died.

That's also what happened in 2017, when a group of House Democrats objected to Trump's win in several states, citing Russia's election interference and problems with voter suppression. No senators joined the House members, however, and Biden -- who was presiding over the session in his role as president of the Senate -- gaveled down and dismissed the objections, certifying Trump as the winner.

"We were trying to focus attention on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's efforts to undermine and sabotage the American election," said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the Democrats who raised an objection on the floor in 2017. "There's certainly a lot more evidence of Vladimir Putin's cyberattacks on the DNC and the (Hillary) Clinton campaign and efforts to manipulate American public opinion through social media than there's been of any fraud or corruption in the 2020 election."

Since the Electoral Count Act was passed in 1887, it was only the second time a protest had forced the two chambers to vote on accepting a state's the Electoral College result, according to the Congressional Research Service. The first was over a single "faithless" elector from North Carolina who cast a vote in 1969 for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon. That objection was also rejected by both chambers.

Boxer said that Tubbs Jones, who died in 2008, convinced her to join the 2005 objection by showing her the problems that took place with Ohio's votes, including hours-long lines at polls, broken voting machines and high rejection rates for provisional ballots in the state's African American communities.

Bisbee wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:55 pm I’m seeing democracy as a system of government fraught with peril by the ineptitudes of voters. But it is still less dangerous for average citizens than dictatorships.