Regarding 1984 election theft ............
A Federal appeals court, in a decision written by the Supreme Court nominee Antonin Scalia, on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to Representative Frank M. McCloskey's seat as the winner of one of the century's closest House elections.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Constitution clearly made the House the only judge of who won an election to a House seat.
It upheld a Federal district judge who had dismissed the challenge by Mr. McCloskey's Republican opponent.
''We simply lack jurisdiction to proceed,'' Judge Scalia wrote. ''It is difficult to imagine a clearer case of 'textually demonstrable constitutional commitment' of an issue to another branch of government to the exclusion of the courts.''
After the first House-controlled vote recount in 24 years, the House in a party-line vote said Mr. McCloskey, a second-term Democrat, defeated Rick McIntyre by four votes, 116,645 to 116,641, in 1984. The two are facing a rematch this fall in Indiana's Eighth Congressional District.
In the 1984 election, Rep. McCloskey faced conservative state senator Rick McIntyre. Buoyed by President Reagan's strong coattails, McIntyre trailed McCloskey by only 72 votes after the initial vote count. A tabulation error, however, resulted in an overcounting of McCloskey votes and the Republican Indiana Secretary of State certified McIntyre as the winner by 34 votes, ignoring other recounted tallies that actually showed McCloskey was in the lead. The Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either McIntyre or McCloskey and conducted their own recount. In the end, the House seated McCloskey after declaring him the winner by just four votes (116,645 to 116,641). The vote was largely along partisan lines and in response every Republican House member marched out of the chamber in protest.