point is that we're -- where have we gotten to today because all of those people, george bush, al gore, me, slade gordon even though we had close elections, we had confidence in the outcome of the election and we moved forward. we moved forward so much in fact that when our country was attacked just a few months la later, we all pulled together to work together to build a more secure nation. we didn't sit around and say, you know, slade gordon didn't sit around and say i lost my 2,229 votes. al gore didn't sit around and say he lost florida by so many votes and the votes weren't counted. no, we moved our country forward and here in the united states senate, we even discussed voting rights and we discussed our federal role, and we discussed what reforms we wanted to have in the system to build more confidence in our electoral system. we didn't disintegrate into voter suppression activities. i can't say that there wasn't some. i now call it nostalgia. there were some who said oh, yeah, vote by mail. maybe we shouldn't have it. i remember one of our colleagues here on the senate floor, he was saying i so m