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Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer and Attorney General Mike Hatch are in charge of laying out the guidelines for ballot changes, in the wake of Sen. Paul Wellstone's death.
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Posted on 10/29/2002 12:35:00 PM PST by Timesink
October 29, 2002
The state DFL Party Tuesday filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court asking it to intervene in the balloting confusion caused by Sen. Paul Wellstone's death last week.
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The petition asks the court to order the secretary of state to stop sending out absentee ballots until a replacement for Wellstone is named. The petition also argues that absentee ballots already returned and marked for Wellstone should be considered spoiled, thus allowing voters to request replacement ballots by mail. DFL attorney Alan Weinblatt says anything less will disenfranchise thousands of voters.
"Folks like that are being told you're out of luck," Weinblatt says. "It's just contrary to Minnesota law. And in addition to that, it's contrary to what Paul would have stood for, and it's contrary to what the citizens of Minnesota stand for."
Attorney General Mike Hatch, a Democrat, and Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, a Republican, both say that county auditors must continue to distribute absentee ballots, even though they still bear the name of Sen. Wellstone. But votes for Wellstone won't count for his ballot successor, which the party will nominate on Wednesday.
Absentee votes already cast for Republican Norm Coleman will count toward his total.
It wasn't immediately clear how fast the court could deal with the lawsuit. Court officials received it just before noon and were deciding how to proceed, a spokesman said.
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"Folks ... are being told you're out of luck. It's just contrary to Minnesota law. And in addition to that, it's contrary to what Paul would have stood for."
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In 2000, legal wrangling over vote counting in Florida, including the handling of absentee ballots, kept the outcome of the presidential race up in the air until mid-December.
Almost 4½ percent of those voting cast absentee ballots in 1998, the last non-presidential election year.
Kiffmeyer and local election officials around Minnesota are still discussing how to count ballots next Tuesday.
The DFL lawsuit takes issue with vote-counting procedures already announced, including Kiffmeyer's plan to have all Senate votes counted by hand. A hand-count could delay results of the race until late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
The lawsuit argues that a supplemental ballot for all voters could be prepared for machine counts. It also argues that Kiffmeyer's office has issued misleading information to absentee voters about what their options are.
Weinblatt says he hopes the court will rule within the next day.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
RealAudio format, 20.7kbps, length 7 minutes 32 seconds. Listen to the RAT trial lawyer spin spin spin.
There is no confusion, they just don't like the law.
Where did you get this? It is against Jewish law to be cremated.
Democrats are playing "the politics of posthumous destruction".
That is incorrect. Plus, you spelled "cremated" wrong. :) Here is a link
I also think the fact that they felt the need to drag Tom Dashole up there to give a big speech in front of Wellstone's campaign headquarters indicates that their internal polls show Mondale isn't going to be the guaranteed win they were expecting. The RATS are scared up there.
My dead and buried jewish father in law disagrees with you.
Already written into the law. Must be all those sunbirds visiting.
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