Of course, this 225 vote lead comes despite the fact that at least 650 absentee ballots were not counted. This is suspicious and comes after votes for Franken began "appearing" after the November 4 election.
Naturally, it's not totally over, but it appears that it is for all intents and purposes. Coleman's chances appear to be nil.
The court ruling suggested Coleman's latest request should be a post-election consideration. The Coleman campaign, meanwhile, said it was determined to take the question to court.
"Today's ruling, which effectively disregards the votes of hundreds of Minnesotans, ensures that an election contest is now inevitable," said Coleman attorney Fritz.
Well, things don't always seem too good. We'll see where it goes.
2 comments:
Is there anyone alive who remembers when Al Franken was funny?
Maybe you're not from Minnesota, but I was sorely disappointed to read "funny business" and "votes found", which gave the election to Al Franken. While he might not be your idea of an ideal candidate (nor mine), the recount in Minnesota was not mishandled. Actually, the only surprise was that Franken didn't win by more votes. When the final official count showed Coleman winning by only 215 votes, his eventual loss wasn't surprising.
Recounts in Minnesota typically benefit Democrats for a variety of reasons. For example, older scanners are used in northern MN, a mining center that's heavily Democratic. Those machines don't pick up lightly marked ballots, and Franken picked up many votes there in the recount. In another area, it was discovered that one machine had malfunctioned and been restarted without running prior votes through it, so there was an undervote there of about 170 ballots. Those were legitimate votes, which added a few votes for Franken.
Double counting may have happened in a number of areas; Franken initially complained about it in some "Coleman friendly" areas, but was rebuffed. Coleman certainly complained and objected the loudest and with more frequency. While it may have appeared to outside observers that court decisions favored Franken, it was because his were more conservative requests with past precedent to support his position.
Coleman's attorneys, along with Coleman applauded Ritchie's choice of canvassing board, which was non-partisan. Ritchie IS a Democrat, but he can't help that. Coleman also tried to get the wrongly rejected absentee ballots thrown out at first, now he's trying to get more in!
Minnesotans are heartwarmingly honest, even in politics. They take voting and running an election seriously. One thing that did become apparent in this election is the old adage of the local canvassing board, " I don't care who wins, as long as it's by a landslide!" The recount clearly showed that there are a lot of small side issues that make for an imperfect world. That's why there's an automatic recount when the total is that close. It could be easily argued that nobody won. If all of the wrongly rejected absentee ballots had been counted, it's likely that Franken would have won by more votes than he did. That's why Coleman initially tried to keep them all out. There will be another election in 6 years, and if Franken doesn't do a great job, he'll be back on SNL.
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