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MmeGigs -> RE: Franken declared winner (1/5/2009 5:15:19 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: corysub
There will doubtless be a court case calling for another recount. Seems there are still questions on many of the votes, lost votes that were counted, votes left in cars...etc etc... Sounds more like Chicago politics than Minnesota.
There won't be any court case calling for another recount. There are no grounds for that. The process has been extremely transparent and well documented, so it will be easy to review. There are very few ballots that are still in question. There were 3 million ballots cast, fewer than 10,000 challenged ballots altogether, and nearly all of those have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. In each of the situations you're alluding to, the issue was either brought before the courts or the campaigns agreed on how they should be handled or both. If you look at the actual facts behind each of the "questionable" situations and how those situations were resolved, you'd be hard pressed to show that the resolution was biased. Our law says that every legally cast ballot should be counted based on the voter's intent, and if you look at the individual decisions that have been made by the courts in this, it's pretty clear that this was their guiding principle.
There was a big scandal in the rightie rags about a clearly biased call on a particular ballot that was blown up into a conspiracy, but it turned out that it was a mistake on the part of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They had a scan of every challenged ballot, who challenged it, on what grounds, and how it was decided by the canvassing board, all available online. I looked at a bunch of them and it was fascinating to see what some people do with their ballots. The Strib screwed up on one ballot and said it was awarded to Franken when the canvassing board had actually awarded it to Coleman. I think it's pretty telling that the screamers who found this one ballot (prior to the Strib's correction) and made such a big deal about it didn't find any others to scream about. I'm sure they looked, since the ballots were so readily available. They're still there now http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/ I haven't seen retractions, but I haven't really looked. If they're out there, they're not with the original diatribe.
The Coleman team says they will file their legal challenge within 24 hours. If it's the challenge that's in the news now, I doubt they'll prevail, but I'm sure they'll get a fair hearing. They may be able to come up with something better. If the courts decide as a result of a legal challenge by one side or the other that this is too close to call, the winner will be determined by a coin toss. That's our state law. I love it. It's a cheap and elegant tie-breaker.
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As far as a guy like Al Franken taking a "middle road".....more of a chance that Bin Laden and Cheney kiss in public.
I don't think I've heard anyone claim that Franken would take a "middle road". Franken never claimed that. I'm sure that the people who voted for him had no such expectation.
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