One of the dramatic changes Democrats imposed to show they had ended a "culture of corruption” now is on the rocks.

The No. 2 leader in the House, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said Tuesday that he wouldn’t mind revising or tossing out one of the new rules his party put into place with great fanfare at the start of the 110th Congress.

The rule banning extra-long voting periods “for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome” has turned out to be unenforceable, Hoyer told a special bipartisan panel that has spent nine months examining one such extended vote.

...

Indiana Republican Mike Pence , one of the six panel members, chided his colleague, saying he “sidestepped a long-standing procedural safeguard designed to ensure the integrity of the vote on the floor of the House.”

Had Republicans won that night, it would have been a morale-booster and a rare political victory in a chamber where the minority party has few opportunities to force votes on tough issues — in this case to deny food stamps to illegal aliens.

Two days of public hearings did little to promote agreement between Democrats and Republicans on what happened on the House floor the night of Aug. 2, 2007.

A special committee created to get to the bottom of what Republicans call a “stolen vote” has spent much of the last nine months — and $500,000 — trying to pin down the facts before recommending ways to prevent such chaos from happening again.

The evenly divided, six-member panel may suggest changing or getting rid of a House rule against keeping roll calls open for the sole purpose of changing the outcome of a vote.

“I leave these public hearings less optimistic that we will agree on what happened that night, but more optimistic that we will embrace reforms to make sure it never happens again,” said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Select Committee to Investigate Voting Irregularities of Roll Call 814, as the panel is formally called.

“Hopefully we can leave this institution off better than we found it,” he said.