Coleman/Franken: More Senate chaos

Sen. Cranky Cronyn seems to forget Florida 2000. I remind him of his party's words at the time, "You lost. Get over it."

"With a little bit,
with a little bit,
With a little bit
of cheating you can win!"

kampongs: Cute. Do you have any accusations towards either side regarding this recount that has been done under the eyes of lawyers from both sides with hundreds of hours of real-time footage recorded and broadcast? This has been a model recount. I wish Florida had been the same so at least Bush could have started with uncontested legitimacy before driving our country into the ditch.

Well at least the Democratic Party can stop manufacturing more ballots for Franken.

State Governors should Not be
appointing Federal Senators!
These laws need to be changed A.S.A.P.!
In both Minnesota and Illinois
special elections should be held!
Voters should decide not crooked
politicians from either party.

Simon Alp: "Well at least the Democratic Party can stop manufacturing more ballots for Franken."

Do you have any specific accusation, one that Coleman's massive team of lawyers and observers who had the entire counting procedure under observation missed? If so, please state it. Coleman's team hasn't and can't.

Every time someone has been specific ('they found votes in a car!'), they have been easily proven to be lying.

jhw539--
As the Great Yogi saith: "It ain't over till it's over."

Model Recount?? See the WSJ

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

APMr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

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Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

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– Judd GreggBoth campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

I wish people who decide to comment about the unlawfulness, or the possible mishandling, of the recount here in Minnesota would actually bother to read up on what's been happening here before they do so. If they, like me, had been watching the recount process live (many, many thanks to Sec. of State Ritchie's office for allowing that), and following it fastidiously in the news, they would come to realize that claims of wrongdoing are more than baseless. There has been absolutely nothing wrong with the process itself - unlike Florida in 2000, I think we Minnesotans have been able to carry out a recount without turning it into a fiasco of grand proportions.

What IS a problem is these ridiculous lawsuits that are being filed - or have been threatened - by both candidates. That, I'm afraid, is putting a rather bad spin on this whole ordeal. Wasn't the tedious recount done in order to keep the election from being decided in the courts? Whoever won the vote won the senate seat - and truly, I think this state's population would have agreed to either candidate, provided that's exactly what they had gotten - the popular vote. As of now, it seems that Mr. Franken has that, and if there were no legal mishaps or missteps, then that is who should be our senator.

jhw539--
Given your tendentious democrat ideological bias, you will have to declare the Dave C post inconsequential and irrelevant, right?

Josie,
You've said nothing!

kampongs: Dave C's post is a weird cut and paste of accusations that, when weighed against the actual data - which the board and in some cases the court has done under the eye of both Franken and Coleman - have been found improbably at best.

Only Franken votes are double counted? Fraken wanted to count all absentee ballots wrongfully discard, Coleman was the one who instigated the terrible court 'by agreement of both camps' rule. The district with the lost ballots had sign in records clearly indicating they were indeed lost. Of course the BIPARTISAN election board is using inconsistent standards in favor of Franken...

Again, that editorial opinion did not raise any new question that, when fully investigated by both campaigns, is found to have any substance.

It is ridiculous to see elections stolen right up in front of voters eyes, I think the process stinks and to see ballots turning up mysteriously for Franken during the recount would make third world dictators proud.

Minnesotans should be embarassed at this mockery of a election recount and at the fraud that was very evident during the recount.

Dems are discovering that to the victor comes not only the spoils, but the responsibility to fight fair. They have to stop deals and say no to temptation of bending the election laws as they see fit. No to Burris and yes to Franken is not okey.

I do not believe that Franken is the winner. Many of those absentee votes that should have been counted for Coleman were given to Franken so he would win the seat. Because he is an entertainer doesn't make it the fact the votes should count for him. This election is a fraud and Coleman should take it to court. The secretary of state should not confirm Franken. This case is not the same as Burris. Burris was appointed the senate seat by the governor. Coleman's was an election. Franken should stay a comedian and get out of politics. Go back to where he came from.

Greg h: You are so right. Coleman was the winner prior. But I believe the people that did the recount gave Franken Coleman's votes so Coleman would lose. That's the democrats again. Didn't Pelosi, Dean and Reid convince the superdelegates to switch their vote to Obama so Hillary would not win the nomination. And I can take bets that they promised them deals they couldn't refuse.

Simon Alp: I am so glad you said that. Because it is positively the truth. The election was stolen from Coleman and given to Franken because that's how the democrats work. Coleman won that election, how did all those votes come up for Franken? Probably because they threw Coleman's votes out of the window.

josie: And I think your nuts. Prior to the recount Coleman won that election. Then when the recount started he lost. We all know that they counted Coleman's votes for Franken. You don't have to be a college graduate to know what's going on in Minnesota. Yes, I would take it to court myself and the judge should order a recount with different people counting the votes. This election is a farce.

jhw: How then was Coleman the winner prior to the recount and absentee ballots. Is it now because they gave Coleman's votes to Franken so he could win this election. I think so and I would take bets that I am right. The democrat dogs are at it again. Always barking.

I continue to be amazed at the way Republicans with no factual knowledge about the Minnesota election recount can be absolutely sure that Franken won by cheating, when none of the Minessota Republicans say that -- not even Coleman. They're perfectly happy to just make things up, or to parrot disinformation from Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, or the WSJ.

I've found that when you ask them to provide evidence or specifics about their accusations, they're baffled. They have no apparent concept of evidence, and being asked for it infuriates them.

And then the call you "stupid"! Really!