PW! You are up early! time stamp on reading here says 3:38am and think here that would have been 1:38am here, early anywhere! — hoping there might be some little bit of news today from the panel, the day not over yet. Respect that they are not being rushed to satisfy outside elements. Doesn’t mean it is not hard to wait though. Good a fund can be established to help Franken. Not good if Norm able to use such a fund for anything else but this case. Muddies the waters. Happy first day of spring! Soon bright sunlight will shine on Franken.

Thanks PW.

digg is open.

Thanks PW!

What is TAKING them so long? I have totally lost any semblence of patience at this point.

Part of their decision-making process is individual decisions on each of the so-called ‘disputed’ ballots. Coleman has asked for about 1200 more to be included, Franken about 450. I have no idea if there is any overlap. A copy of each of these ballots outer ’security’ envelopes needs to be physically inspected and comparisons made with the voter’s registration application. I don’t know what all else will go into this evaluation. Assuming no overlaps in the ballot counts – they need to look at about 1600 envelopes and applications. There will be discussions around the variations in signatures (which everyone has) and possibly other criteria as well.

Of course, copies submitted by the Coleman campaign will also have to be double checked when the actual ballots (if any) are brought to the Secretary of State’s office, since the Coleman camp has had a bit of difficulty with “true and accurate copying” in some of their previous submittals.

If they do decide to include any of them, those particular ballots (which are still in their sealed, security envelopes at the precinct where they were cast) will have to be brought to the Secretary of State’s office, where they will assemble a crew, open, count them, and adjust the counts for each precinct. The physical ballots will have to be returned to the precincts so they each can then file an amended voting report with the new ballots included.

Once that process has been completed, the Court will be in a position to give out their ruling. They cannot rule before any of these ballots are counted since in the unlikely event Normie actually gets more votes and wins the count – the entire case becomes immediately moot.

So, it’s not as easy as saying Normie lost, Al won. Sign the papers.

This has become like a droning, aging folk song: “When will they ever learn?”

When will it ever end?

Clearly no one cares one bit about representing the people of Minnesota, but they care alot about grandstanding and procrastination. It has become disgusting.

But note this: However much a pain in the ass Coleman is being with his seemingly unending attempts to game the system in order to delay Franken being seated (on behalf of the GOP of course) just be thankful that there is an established system in place in MN for election challenges.

So don’t hop on some unthinking bandwagon rushing to change MN’s system because of impatience.

4 words:

Florida. Bush versus Gore.

Coleman’s extreme claim seems calculated to discredit elections as such by making every close election invalid. This means that he’s sure to get three votes if he reaches the Supremes, because Scalia, Thomas, and Alito think that elections are a bad thing. Maybe Roberts, I don’t know.

John, this will never get to the US Supreme Court.

To get into Federal Court, Coleman would need to provide evidence that differeces in proceedure, county by county, sufficently disadvantaged Coleman and changed the outcome of the election, such that he can bring an equal protection claim. Coleman has brought forth no such evidence, and he took five weeks in the Election Contest Court to provide his evidence, and proved nothing of the sort. Yes indeed, there are some slight differences between the way County A did something, when compared with County B — but for that to be an equal protection argument, you need to show that it resulted in more than a slight random variation.

In fact, the recount and the contest looked at as a whole suggest that the random variations in the system worked to Franken’s disadvantage. Election Night returns as corrected in the first days showed Coleman ahead by about 215 votes. Then we did the recount of the machine counted ballots, and Al Franken was ahead by 49. Then we added in the pile 5 ballots — the wrongly rejected absentee ballots both candidate’s camps agreed upon, and ordered counted by the Supreme Court, and Franken led by 225. Most of those who have kept close tabs on the six points involved in making any remaining absentee ballots legal votes believe Coleman may get something like 100 of his counted, and Franken will get about 400 counted. Then there are the nearly 50 Nauen votes (voters who petitioned the Supreme Court to get their ballots counted outside the Franken Case) and those are all Franken votes. So since Election night and the first canvass, Franken has picked up about — perhaps 800 votes. If anyone did not have “Equal Protection” it was Franken.

For those who still think the Supreme Court of the US has something to do with this — forget it. Read that part of the US Constitution that says that the Senate is the final judge of elections or appointments of its members — and then look at the reading of Minnesota law the MNSC has been pointing to in its decisions with respect to this case — when we finish our state process we send the whole package, plus a certificate and the winner — TO THE US SENATE. The Constitution makes each house the final judge of its own members elections. And don’t forget that election in 1948 — Landslide Lyndon won by just 69 votes, highly suspicious ballots, found some days after the election, with all the voters on the sign in sheet using similar signatures, and voting in alphabetical order. But six years later, LBJ was Majority Leader. Gads Franken may arrive with about 600 to his credit.

Just today it hit me how we should innocently approach Franken’s coming Senatehood. We need to demand that people in the media introduce him not as a former comic, but as the author of the long time Best Seller, “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and other observations.” Just make the media whiz-kids say the title of his book over and over when they introduce him. You know “This is David Gregory with Meet the Press; and our guest this morning is Minnesota’s new Senator, Al Franken, Best selling Author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and Other Observations.” First Question: “Is ‘Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and Other Observations,’ still in Print?” Do you still get Royalities?

I really await the interviews of our Best Selling Author.

Very nice post, Sara.

Thanks lokywoky and Sarah. Those were really good explanations.

Absolutely right!

This election contest proceeding has demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that it would be absolutely impossible for the vote count in any close election where election judges must exercise discretion in evaluating voter intent or voter qualifications would be invalidated under a strict application of Bush v Gore.

Just a real world demonstration of why Bush v Gore was such an abomination in the first place!