The Last Three Contested House Races: Texas, Louisiana, and (of course) Florida

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A month after election day we're finally down to just three contested House races:

• Louisiana-2nd District: Scandal-plagued incumbent Democratic Rep. William Jefferson will defend his seat against Democratic challenger Karen Carter in a runoff on Saturday.
• Texas-23rd District: Incumbent Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla faces off against former Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez in a runoff on December 12th. Bonilla fell just short of obtaining the 50 percent he needed to win on November 7th after a judge threw out the congressional district in place during the primary, ordering the general election open to all comers. The district had been drawn under a plan orchestrated by former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) in 2003 and was ruled to violate the voting rights of Latinos.
• Florida-13th District: Republican Vern Buchanan has been certified the winner of Rep. Katherine Harris's open seat with a 369 vote margin over Democrat Christine Jennings. However, voting irregularities, including 18,000 missing votes, were rife during the election and Jennings and several organizations have filed suit to challenge the results. They are seeking a new election because the electronic voting machines used in the district have no paper trail. We're going to put this one in Buchanan's column for now, but I wouldn't count Jennings out yet.

In the meantime, we're going to retire the "Wiki the Vote" graphic off the front page, but you can find all of our coverage of the 2006 elections under the "Quick Links" heading at the top of the Congresspedia home page.