It was different this time. When Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones rose in the House chambers, she announced that she had a protest to lodge against the Ohio vote, in writing as required. "And," she said, "I do have a senator." The senator was California's Barbara Boxer, who said she joined in the protest because it was the only way to shed light on the voting irregularities in Ohio and the need for election reform nationwide. Sen. Ted Kennedy praised Boxer for forcing the issue, saying that to treat the vote certification as a "meaningless ritual would be an insult to our democracy." But as noble as the Democrats' intentions might have been, it was hard to see how the protest itself was anything other than a "meaningless ritual." The protest put a hold on the vote certification so that each house could retire to its respective chamber for debate and a vote on the issue. But Boxer -- or anyone else who thought the protest would lead to serious discussion of election reform -- must have been disappointed by the sorry spectacle that followed. There was no sense of history being made, no sense that anything was really happening at all. Although a few hundred people protested in the drizzle across the street from the Capitol, the visitor galleries in the Senate were mostly empty. Fewer than a dozen senators showed up for the debate, and only the ones who spoke -- among them, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, in his first floor speech, Barack Obama -- seemed to take it seriously. As Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin made an impassioned plea for a bipartisan effort to improve the electoral system, Dick Cheney and Sen. Rick Santorum sat slumped in a couple of chairs on the edge of the Senate floor, talking and laughing. They weren't listening. With solid majorities in both houses, they didn't have to.