But you are not dealing with just numbers. Every voter should have a ballot and that ballot is something a human can make a decision about... it becomes a legal process instead of a mathematical one.
The latest count is Franken with a 48 vote lead after all of the challenges have been tallied. Coleman is still challenging that about 100 replacement ballots have been double counted and the two camps along with the canvassing board still need to agree on how to count about 1,500 absentee ballots that were wrongly rejected.
Stick a fork in Norm Coleman; he's done. The Hail Mary pass was incomplete. Say hello to Sen. Al Franken (ugh!) sometime in January. http://www.startribune.com/politics...yP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUac8HEaDiaMDCinchO7DU
I wouldn't say this is over yet as the two camps still have to agree on how the absentee ballots will be counted and can challenge those. Its also possible that those ballots might not break as solidly for Franken as the predicted.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28495674/?GT1=43001 Coleman dealt another setback in Minn. race Top court rejects Republican's request to count 650 more rejected ballots MINNEAPOLIS - The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected Republican Norm Coleman's request to count an additional 650 rejected absentee ballots in the state's U.S. Senate recount. The court's ruling Monday likely paves the way for the state Canvassing Board to certify results showing Democrat Al Franken won the race. But Coleman's attorneys have said they are likely to sue if he loses the recount, meaning it could be weeks more before the outcome is final. Coleman had argued the ballots were improperly rejected. In a five-page ruling, the high court said the dispute was among issues better handled in an "election contest," or lawsuit. Franken leads Coleman by 225 votes after the state finished counting more than 900 absentee ballots that the state and the campaigns earlier had agreed were improperly rejected. Legal maneuvering Lawyers for both campaigns have laid the groundwork for lawsuits through public comments and legal maneuvering. In recent weeks, as Franken clung to a small lead, Coleman's lawyers promised a lawsuit over their claim that some ballots duplicated on election night wound up being counted twice in the recount. The Coleman campaign also has a petition pending before the state Supreme Court to include 650 ballots that it says were improperly rejected but not forwarded by local officials to St. Paul for counting. The court has not said when it would rule in that case. New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who until recently was the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Sunday that Franken had won the election. "While there are still possible legal issues that will run their course, there is no longer any doubt who will be the next Senator from Minnesota," Schumer said. "With the Senate set to begin meeting on Tuesday to address the important issues facing the nation, it is crucial that Minnesota's seat not remain empty, and I hope this process will resolve itself as soon as possible." Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called Schumer's comments premature and troubling, since Schumer is the new chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over contested elections. "Senator Schumer will likely play a key role in determining who ultimately assumes this Senate seat," Cornyn said. "Pre-judging the outcome while litigation is still pending calls into question his ability to impartially preside over this matter when it comes before the Committee, as it most certainly will." Coleman's term as senator officially expired Saturday. Senate Republican leaders have said the chamber shouldn't seat Franken until all legal matters are settled, even if that drags on for months. Franken campaign spokesman Andy Barr said in an e-mail Sunday: "In terms of future planning, we're taking it one step at a time. The next step is the canvass board's meeting tomorrow, where we have every expectation they will declare that Al won the election."
Again: This race is over in the sense that Coleman will not return as senator and Franken will take his place. It's a matter of when, not if. For me, that defines over. The outcome is clear and the drama is gone. Sen. Al (cough, cough) Franken. I just can't say it.
more votes than voters. [rquoter]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.[/rquoter]
The Minnesota Senate race has been one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. At this point they may have been better off running the election all over again. Ridiculous situation.
Well it is good to see that a good honest guy like Franken has won. A good day for America. I used to like his TV program. He is a very level headed guy who will do a good job.
That's hilarious. It'll be good to have a senator with a sense of humor and an appreciation of irony. Oh, and he's a c*m laude Harvard graduate, which is apparently better than a C student.
I like this Franken moment even better- <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b_mwsDFm7bQ&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b_mwsDFm7bQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Watching the wingnut's impotent rage as Franken becomes a senator makes it all the sweeter. Here's to Franken picking up where Wellstone left off. Wooooooooohooooo!!!
Sadly, your correct in many aspects there. In this day & age, anytime the incumbent gets the boot, it's usually a good thing. I don't know enough about the man to personally criticize/comment on him, but my personal opinion was that he was always a douche. But my opinions don't count for much and maybe gov't needs more douches....i dunno. I can take the douchiest candidate as long as he's honest and has some common sense. I'll refrain from urinating on harvard grads for now.....save that for another thread.
I wish the anti Franken folks would at least provide some details other than "he's a douche." It seems to me that his picking apart of people who lie constantly is the reason he's disliked by some.
