Ever since the evening of November 4, Norm Coleman and his surrogates have pushed two (2) themes: That he won the election fair and square with no recount needed, and that Evil Al Franken and his Icky Lawyers would, if a recount was allowed to happen, overwhelm and prolong the process with legal actions that sowed chaos and confusion in the manner of Florida in 2000.
As we’ve already seen, it’s been Norm Coleman’s crew that’s been trying the hardest to stop the count, or to sow chaos, fear, uncertainty and doubt about it. And now, with the state canvassing poring over the challenged ballots set aside during the first phase of the recount — Coleman still had over a thousand, Franken about four hundred and forty — Coleman’s lead has shrunk down to two votes.
That’s right: Two. Votes. Bear in mind that all of the Franken challenges have been dealt with and added to Norm’s totals; what’s left are Norm’s challenges, and since he made more ballot challenges than did Al Franken, and a ton of frivolous ones, expect to see Al Franken take the lead tomorrow, most likely for good. Even the Strib is currently projecting Franken leading by eighty-nine votes once all the challenges are dealt with.
Worse yet for Coleman is that his legal gambit to keep the hundreds of improperly-rejected "fifth pile" absentee ballots from being counted was shot down by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which promptly ordered those counties that hadn’t already done so to get cracking on counting those ballots. Though he got one thing to break in his favor: His campaign will have a say in how these ballots are counted, along with the Franken campaign, Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, and the various local canvassing boards; once they agree on these standards, the counties will have until December 31 to issue a report on these ballots. Supreme Court Justice Alan Page (yes, that Alan Page, sports fans), in a dissent, argued that giving the campaigns authority over how to count these ballots took away from the local boards the authority that was rightly theirs.
What’s happening now is pretty much what was guaranteed to happen ever since it was clear that Norm Coleman didn’t have enough of an alleged lead to avoid triggering an automatic recount. It’s taking a long time, and it would have taken less time if not for Coleman’s delaying tactics. But sometime in the first few weeks of the new year, the recount will be done, and it will be unassailably rock-solid and as lawyer-proof as frail human minds can make it. And the likelihood is that Al Franken will be sworn in as Minnesota’s newest United States Senator.
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PW!!!
Hi, PW. Great news. Thanks. Go Al!
I saw KO mention this on Countdown and have been looking for your analysis!
FunnyD
Digg it
Franken!
Congrats PW! We’re going to kick that creepy little carpet bagger to the curb!
Make that, Senator Franken!
Doesn’t that sound nice ! And he may just laugh in Reid’s face.
Dandy! Thanks PW!
I enjoyed hearing all over the MSM broadcasts how squeaky-clean MN is on voting process. Could have sworn I heard Norm in the background grinding his teeth.
Hey folks who criticize Caroline in re NY Hillary-seat, ahem, what’s that bidness about lack of experience? Does that only apply once in awhile when it’s conveeenient?
Don’t get me wrong. Not challenging anything. Just curious. heh.
Well, good on your State Supremes for their ruling. Somebody had to stand on the side of the voters. Not to impugn any of your no doubt fine elections officials and staff, but it’s always struck me that making the “fifth pile” a bit taller would be a really great way to give candidate x an edge in a close election with no one the wiser. As long as it remained uncounted. Now that’s no longer a problem.
Save yourselves some headaches, canvassing boards: count the absentee ballots right in the first place! And get busy finding, correcting and counting your honest mistakes as soon as that recount is triggered.
I’d like to say that I don’t understand why whether or not to revisit and count the “fifth pile” has been such a big forking issue, but I do. I just don’t like what it says about what some powerful politicians and their lawyers actually think about one person, one vote–that it’s not a core American value but something to be finessed or manipulated in order to win.
FunnyD
Guess you haven’t read any of their books. Franken’s are heavily about politics.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb…..fix=al+fra
Caroline’s are about fairy tales.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb…..efix=carol
However, if Caroline should submit herself to a vote, well, I guess our system works that whoever gets voted for, experienced or not, gets to take office. But annointing Saint Caroline, not so much.
Now we will see an honest Joker in the Senate.
Uhm, no. Only when it’s a matter of being _appointed_ to the United States forking Senate when one’s political activism, though no doubt admirable, has been pretty limited.
You Ess Forking Senate, mind you. The top of the top of legislative bodies in the entire country. I’m sure there are plenty of politically active folks in NYS at least as qualified as CKS based on what they’ve done in public life, as lawyers, or even as authors of scholarly books about the Constitution who wouldn’t in a million years be considered for this appointment.
Franken got out, campaigned and the _VOTERS_ of Minnesota got to make an informed choice. It’s not as simple as “experience”, and the two situations are NOT parallel and I wish we could stop pretending ignorance of that fact.
FunnyDiva
Don’t get me wrong. Not challenging anything. Just
curiousstating the facts as I see ‘em. heh.an honest anything at this point would be damn refreshing, imo.
FunnyD
I really should have let you say it, since you said it so much better, but I had fun. Heh.
XXOO
FunnyD
Uh, that is not true.
From Wikipedia:
Kennedy and Ellen Alderman have written two books together on civil liberties:
* In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights In Action (1990) and
* The Right to Privacy (1995)
On her own, she has edited these New York Times best-selling volumes:
* A Patriot’s Handbook
* The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
* A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children
* Profiles in Courage for Our Time
She is also the author of A Family Christmas a collection of poems, prose and personal notes from her family history.
Has she written poetry books? Yes, but also books on our civil rights and the Constitution.
Well it has been pretty obvious for a long time that the only way Republicans can win elections in most places is by preventing people from voting. Even they admit it.
One smart cookie, no doubt.
It is Thersday, upstairs!
BREAKING: Shoe-Throwing Iraqi TOTAL WEENIE, Not in Fact Butch, Neener
It’s Thersday upstairs!
Holy purple people eaters
the Holy eat purple people? Really?
FunnyD
That would be Alan Page and the Minnesota Vikings defense of the ’70s. I don’t know what kind of people Joe Lieberman eats.
I don’t think that Coleman wants to get into a pushing fight with Alan Page…it might permanently muss up his
stuccohair.I watched a bit of the canvassing yesterday and today and found it both compelling and boring at the same time. There’s gotta be a German word for it! In any case it looks as if Al will end up with several hundred votes more than Norm. There remains a gambit about some ballots (@140) that Coleman argues are “double voted” absentees. But as pointed out by several of the folks on the board, “that’s a hypothesis” without substantial evidence. It’s entirely based on differences b/w the vote results and the actual ballots. It could just as easily be that some ballots were misplaced. Given that the vote results differ by odd numbers it seems more likely the latter. In any case, it would be impossible to identify the actual ballots involved. So they could be Coleman votes as Franken. In any case, although the number may seem large it’s likely that the actual votes, if recounted and then half subtracted from the total for that precinct, would net Coleman only a handful of votes. Both Coleman and Franken absentees would have been double counted.
I LOVE the smell of Franken Al Sense this time of year!! *G*
A voice of reason, good to hear it. Thanks for sharing.
The psychopathic patios babble wears me down anymore . . ;-)
Look, I’m sure Kennedy is a bright, capable, compassionate woman. But one of the problems with our body politic is that citizens don’t have confidence in our institutions, and they believe the entire process is corrupt. So how does selecting the privileged child of a political dynasty, who went to Harvard undergrad and Columbia Law but never practiced a day in her life because she just didn’t need the money, make people respect the process more? New York is a HUGE state, and some of the most intelligent, capable people in the world live there. I want to see a merit-based process, and it’s simply not possible that the most qualified candidate is also JFK’s daughter. Let someone else have a try.
Senators are appointed to fill a vacancy to the next election.
That means that it’s going to be the well-connected who are considered seriously for the seat. That’s just the nature of the beast. Caroline Kennedy is well-connected, so she’s going to get serious consideration for the seat.
Is it fair? Nope. Not a bit of it. But that’s how it is.
Billy Holiday put it well:
Them’s that got shall get,
Them’s that not shall lose.
So the Bible says,
But it still makes news.
Who knew The House and Senate were actually the House of Lords?
Kennedy has never won an election in her life. She is the daughter of a politician. Know what that qualifies her for in America? Nothing.
New Yorkers should be outraged at the thought of her being handed the keys to their state.
I hope we move on from this topic…nothing new is being said.