Al Franken, and Contested Ballots

As usual in politics, they are both insane. There is a video out there with a bunch of ballots contested by the Coleman campaign with the only reasoning being that the person voted for McCain for President and Fraken for the Senate.

so stupid, any ballot that has any sort of extra markings. or like 2 filled out and then tried to correct. should be thrown out no matter how clear or ambiguous their intent was.

seriously if you are not capable of filling in a fucking circle you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

lol

That's Senator Al Franken (D-MN).

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/04/min...race/index.html

I saw Franken in his first film role this weekend- as a baggage handler in Trading Places.

I know nothing about either of these guys' postions on the issues, but im glad to see Franken in just for the lolz.

Son of a bitch. I knew this was going to happen. Regardless of the outcome, both of those clowns should be embarrassed. Fighting over a senate seat like a couple of kindergarten snots over the red firetruck. You know, the one with the telescoping ladder and neat siren. (and yes I know the vote was so close that this could play out no other way)



I'm glad as well... to observe it 1800 miles away.

the real question is: who the fuck is dumb enough to not know who they're voting for when they enter the booth?

From today's WSJ Opinion...

JANUARY 5, 2009, 4:42 A.M. ET

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

Ipso facto this is a disgrace; and, of course, it's an ipso facto negative as anything that veers from the right-most corner is a chink (of varying degree) in America's ever-fading armor. Overall, however, I think a conservative should be quite pleased by a Frankendonkey victory. At the very least we will have a senator with a published book that takes alliteration to a whole new, mind-numbing level. If Howard Dean ever gets his shit in order and curtails his predilection for fingering white-doves the DNC might work his sweet-hide into a Senate seat, as well!

Which seems smart and great until you realize that leftist views are everywhere.

Enough people to make your fucking head spin

Either way a lawsuit will be brought forth and more time will be wasted until franken's cuisine reigns supreme

Republicans in December 2000: The courts have handed down their decision and these Liberal whiners have to respect the judicial process.

Republicans in January 2008: Waaaaaahhhhh....the court decision wasn't FAIR....the people were disenfranchised....wwwaaaaahhhhhhh....


Face it- your crappy candidate got beaten by Stuart Smalley.

The "liberal radio" is a failure arguement isn't necessarily true as others have stated. NPR is drunkenly liberal, but it at least covers issues that need to be covered that the mainstream media doesn't address.

Air America's failure is more a result of being absent of any real substance and being grounded in ripping Bush/Republicans (to be fair I didn't listen that much). Good conservative radio shows (Not Rush, people like Jerry Doyle, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck) are more focused on debate and exposing the failures of the entire government, not just one particular side.

In my opinion, most liberals would rather listen to worldly stories of genocide and global warming on NPR than confront the problems of our government. If they are interested in fixing the government, there is no liberal viewpoint and so they are forced to listen to conservative radio.

Barry, one of the most profound statements you have ever made. Amen!

/endthread