Posted on 12/12/2008 11:42:25 AM PST by dr_who
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Democrat Al Franken got good news Friday in his bid for the Senate, winning favorable rulings from a state elections board on rejected absentee ballots and the tally in one of his strongholds.
The Canvassing Board overseeing the race recount recommended that county election boards sort and count wrongly rejected absentee ballots. The five-member panel also urged that a recount in one University of Minnesota area precinct be based on Election Night tapes from a ballot counting machine.
The recount there, where results favor Franken, ended with 133 missing ballots that could be counted if the tapes are used.
While the state board's recommendations are nonbinding, most counties have gone forward with a voluntary sorting. Others, however, have balked in the drawn-out recount as Franken tries to topple Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.
"It was a great day for democracy," Franken attorney Marc Elias said of the state board's recommendations.
At least 638 absentee ballots are known to have been rejected for something other than the four legal reasons for disqualification. That's based on an assessment of about half of Minnesota's counties by the secretary of state's office. State officials estimate the total could top 1,500.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Franken opened up a new company called Minnesota Fabrication and Mining.
What a coincidence, they were all Democrat generated ACORN ballots.
Their hats aren’t where they are pulling this stuff out of..
If there are 1600 absentee ballots that they deem “worthy”, statistics dictate that 800.06 will go for Coleman and 799.94 will go for Franken (a .127 vote pickup for Coleman) - any outcome other than this involves funny business.
I’m not a big believer in incumbent protections, but I think in cases like these, as in boxing, there should be some presumption of incumbency, unless the contender has CLEARLY won a decision.
This one will never be clear. And the rats can’t figure out which is worse, a Republican from Minnesota, or having to admit THAT *SSH*LE franken to the Senate club.
I would tend to agree. If the final result is within 100 votes either way, who actually won is essentially unknowable given the number of ballots where the voter intent is borderline uncertain. If 1,000 experts examined the questioned ballots that were put online, you would get 1,000 different results.
So, you might as well use a coin toss to settle the election, unless there is a rule allowing the incumbent to keep the seat in the case of a tie. (But then you still have the question of how much of a lead does the challenger need to make it a win and not a tie? No easy solutions.)
It would seem to me that if the voter cast a valid absentee ballot which was rejected for no good reason then they are being disenfranchised unfairly (and perhaps unlawfully, though that is still to be decided). I would be certainly angry if that had happened to me, and not all the rejected ballots are Franken supporters.
Count them and let the chips fall where they may.
Please, let’s quit acting like this election was close.
Barkley was going to run as a Dem and was supported by Ventura nuts and a split DFL faction.
None of those 400,000 people were going to vote for Coleman in a runoff.
Coleman would’ve been destroyed in a runoff.
Be mad (and afraid) of the idiot voters in Minnesota, not the cheater Dems.
Barkley (I) 433,312 15%
Coleman (R) 1,199,857 42%
Franken (D) 1,199,167 42%
Unfortunately that's not the case. Franken had a lead of about 8% in the absentee votes that have already been counted, so the odds are he will gain also votes if they are counted. Why do you think he's been lobbying for them so hard?
These a-wipes will not stop until they have “found” enough ballots for Frankenstein. It’s like the Wash. state stolen Governor’s race all over again.
It’s sad, but I have to agree with you! Also, why aren’t they all over the Obama non-citizenship issue?
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244
Fixed it>
Can't I be mad at both? I'm not seeing the mutual exclusivity here...
As the Democrat Governor of Washington declared after King County added enough ballots to reverse the Republicans win in the original vote count and the first recount: “It is a model of democracy.” After all in Orwellian New Speak democracy has nothing to do with the people selecting their leaders, the new meaning is a Party calling itself Democratic imposes it will on everyone else.
Sure! You can churn your own butter if you like, too!
But the fact is, if Minnesota had its act together its election laws would have been written to have a runoff like Saxby, but there Franken would win by a mile.
Eaking out this particular vote is whistling past the graveyard.
OTOH, Franken might do more tarnishing the 'progressive' cause than Coleman could do to further the conservative cause anyway.
...which was, of course, the implied point of my original post.
I'm not sure why you seem to be advocating that everyone just say "oh well, he would've won by a mile anyway in a run-off vote IF there had been a run-off vote which there won't be so it's a moot point but still, oh well, because if there HAD been a run-off, then he would've won and..."
None of that stops me from being mad at the whole situation and the decline of common sense and ethical behavior in America. Sorry but I don't get the part where being concerned about the corruption of the political process in America and the rise of those that help to make it corrupt is equivalent to "churning my own butter."
So true, so true.
However, the political and ethical behavior of the Democrat officials is nothing new, and would have no effect on these votes if the larger electorate had reasonable morals and ethics to vote against these idiotic and unethical Libtards.
The corrupt election process is a symptom.
Fix the corruption in the local precinct captains, fix the "vote finding," fix the meddling activist election judges....and what do you still get? >>> Senator Al Franken.
You can buy your daughter a new Mercedes and keep dickering with the quality of the bodyshop's work each time she wrecks it, but until she learns how to drive, anything she has is going to look like a POS.
You can fix the election process, but as long as the Minnesota voters are irresponsible fools, they'll end up looking just like Illinois, or worse!
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