Posted on 11/29/2008 8:50:17 AM PST by rhema
The setback at the Canvassing Board has forced Al Franken to face the fact that he didn’t get enough valid votes to beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate Race. With the rejection of his bid to get the panel to add in thousands of rejected absentee ballots, there seems little chance that the remaining 15% of ballots left in the recount will produce the kind of change that 85% has not. What’s a surly, self-absorbed DFL candidate to do?
Sue:
Minnesota’s U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel’s ruling on rejected absentee ballots dealt a blow to Democrat Al Franken’s chances.
For the first time, his campaign on Wednesday openly discussed mounting challenges after the hand recount involving Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman concludes. That includes the possibility of drawing the Senate into the fracas.
The state Canvassing Board denied Franken’s request to factor absentee ballots rejected by poll workers into the recount. He sought to overturn the exclusions in cases where ballots were invalidated over signature problems or other voter errors. Coleman’s campaign maintained the board lacked power to revisit those ballots.
Going to court was always inevitable. Gone are the days when the loser of a close election would have the class to accept a tough loss and wish the winner well. The recount is automatic in this case, and a good idea, but the notion that courts should determine winners and losers is antithetical to democracy.
More worrisome is this statement from Harry Reid:
The board’s decision drew a response from the Senate’s top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called it a “cause for great concern.”
“As the process moves forward, Minnesota authorities must ensure that no voter is disenfranchised,” Reid said in a statement. “A citizen’s right to have his or her vote counted is fundamental in our democracy.”
The Senate does have the authority to determine the winner of any Senate election, as does House for its elections, but they rarely use that power. Reid’s comment threatens the efforts of Minnesota to provide a non-partisan, fair, and legitimate election. In fact, it sounds like an extortion attempt to push state officials into a particular decision that would violate the law in order to produce a specific partisan result.
We have laws on the books to ensure that voter fraud and manipulation regarding absentee ballots gets avoided to the extent possible. (We don’t have such laws with voter registration, which is another issue entirely.) Each citizen who casts his votes according to the law has the right to have them counted, and that is fundamental to our democracy, but the citizen has the responsibility to cast them properly according to the law. Citizens who fail to do so lose the ability to have their vote count in that election.
Any action by the Senate to render this election to Franken on that basis would have the effect of undermining the rule of law. That will be completely unacceptable to Minnesotans, as it should be to all states. Expect Minnesotans to take action if Reid pursues that path.
lawsuit against Obama???? That's not possible these days. We can't even get the courts to uphold the constitutional requirement that the President be a "natural born citizen". Obama refuses to show a birth certificate to prove that he is and there is plenty of reason to suspect that such a certificate does not exist.
You are wrong! There were several other candidates on the ballot that got quite a few votes.
No, the American people do not equate “sore losers” with Democrats; only with, Republicans. That’s whay they vote down nearly every Republican denied victory in a fraudulent election who tries again later.
How could the U.S. Senate make Franken the winner if he had less votes than Coleman if fraud or some misapplication of election law is not proven?
Why the Long Face!
No, Republican voters won’t say a word if Reid demands that Franken be seated. Most are totally as clueless as their Democrat cousins.
The Democrats believe they have the moral right to power acquired by any means. Controlling both Congress and the White House, this will only get worse. If only we had a press in this country that wouldn’t turn a blind eye to this kind of fraud.
Still, the Demos don’t have to do all that: they have Specter, Collins, Snowe, even others waiting in the wings to bail them out.
If the election goes to the Senate no one will care enough in the MSM to comment except to point out that the Dems would then be one seat away from a filibuster proof Senate. Stealing an election doesn’t phase them in the least nor give them pause.
If this is true, why couldn’t the RATS simply refuse to seat any Republican?
It is the home of Lake Woebegone...if Garrison Keeler said vote Franken, as he almost certainly did, then the PBS crowd simply fell obediently in line.
..with Candidates that can prove they are natural born citizens...
The sad thing is that Franken’s only qualification for holding office is that he has a recognizable name with a (D) after it. What was the subject of his doctoral dissertation again? Where did he get his Master’s in Political Science? When did he get a BA with a major in political theory? It is insane that a failed comedian comes within a few hundred votes of getting any office. It is the most damning indictment of the intellectual capability of at least half of the eligible voters.
The Mpls Star Tribune posted scans of 599 disputed ballots, and gave people the chance to review them and decide who got that vote. I looked at all 599 of them, and Coleman came out ahead by 24 votes. There are over 5,000 challenged ballots. If this 599 are a representative sample, Coleman’s lead will only increase, and he’ll win a razor think majority. Interestingly enough, most of the ballots being challenged by both candidates are pretty straight forward, and most are pretty frivilous, such as stray pen marks elsewhere on the ballot. There were several ballots where more than 1 candidate was marked, and several others where no one was marked.
There was also an Independent candidate in the Senate race so it was less. Plus some Acorn fraud probably gave Franken more votes....nevertheless way too many Minnesotans voted for this creature IMHO.
The fact, and a major root cause of many of our problems today, is that people have no more respect for the law than they do for the law makers.
Fear of armed insurrection.
Don’t forget, they also have McCain on many issues.
Where all the children are so ugly that they can only succeed on radio?
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