Analyst: Senate may decide Minn. election

UPI.com ^ | 11-29-08 | UPI.com

[ReignOfError]

Article I, section 5: "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members..."

The limitations of the "qualifications" power of the House were established in the Adam Clayton Powell case. To my knowledge, there has been no such court ruling on the power to judge elections. Presumably, if acting as "judge," the Senate would need some rationale for its decision; it lacks the power to appoint Senators, but if there are two plausible vote counts, the Senate can choose either.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

The fact that Coleman and the GOP isn't raising bloody Hell over this simply reveals that he doesn't want to keep the seat.

That's part of the reason why Coleman barely won to begin with. Too much reaching across the aisle, bipartisanship crap. How's that working out for you now Coleman? Democrats ain't your friends.

[xcamel]

see #19

[Keith in Iowa]

>>>The fact that Coleman and the GOP isn’t raising bloody Hell over this simply reveals that he doesn’t want to keep the seat.<<<

Wow. Quite an assumption.

I’m guessing that the Coleman camp is like the Republican side in general, in that they assume the rule of law will be abided by, and can’t fathom that the other side is going to cheat, and they expect the courts will be a remedy to circumvent the cheating. How’s that for assumptions? :)

[RGPII]

“For Franken a Math Problem”

http://www.startribune.com/politics/35263049.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUX

“Challenged ballots may offer the Senate challenger a path to overtaking Coleman, but numbers indicate it would be a tough route.”

[Gay State Conservative]

...but if there are two plausible vote counts, the Senate can choose either.

But who gets to define the word "plausible"?

[mountainfolk]

Coleman is fighting this Franken attempt to steal his senate seat. He has hired the top lawyer in the country to continue this fight as far as it can go. I do not recall the names involved but anybody can check out POWER LINE blog for a running commentary, most days, on the activity of the Coleman Franken election recount. I do believe that if this seat is stolen by the democrats, the collateral damage will benefit the Republicans. Hopefully Coleman will win as will Saxby Chablis in Georgia.

[machogirl]

“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”
Aristotle

[Non-Sequitur]

Sad, but true.

[nathanbedford]

That a majority of the United States Senate has the power to seat or decline to seat a member is explicit in the Constitution and and has been honored at least once in practice when the Democrats sat a Democrat who, to my recollection, had actually lost the election by a few hundred votes.

Therefore, as a matter of public relations the Democrats need only contrive some plausible argument which they know will be reinforced by the media and then they can go ahead and sit Franken. Evidently, Majority Leader Reid has already told the troops that they have such an issue. If they do that there is no appeal to any court, except the court of public opinion.

That the Republicans are impotent to prevent an injustice in Minnesota is only emblematic of the disaster which is a fallen the Republican Party, largely I believe as a result of their own fecklessness starting with the head feck, George Bush, and trickling all the way down to Duke Cunningham and our favorite Senator in Alaska. Too bad that Stevens did not win that election because it might have caused the Democrats to fail to seat him and put them one more step down the path toward overreaching and perhaps made it politically more difficult for them to fail to seat a second Republican Senator. At any rate, we Republicans are impotent to effect the results and can only appeal to the Court of public opinion. Unfortunately, after we exhaust talk radio we have no pulpit and no effective spokesman to plead our case. But Plead our case we must and in this instance we do have some pretty good arguments to make. Coleman is a solid conservative than a decent man and Al Franken is at best a clown and at worst a criminal. Rush Limbaugh should have some fun with this one.

The Democrats might not risk overreaching in this instance, figuring they can summon the necessary 60 votes by collaring the one needed Republican rino such as either of the two ladies from Maine, Arlen Specter, maybe Voinovich of Ohio, Lindsey Graham and John McCain on some issues, and God knows who else. It should not be hard, after all, with the media beating on them like a drum.

We so desperately need a spokesman who can get the attention of the media or at least force the media to pay attention so that he can provide some cover to our senators. If anyone thinks that Michael Steele is that man, he simply does not understand the kind of personality required for this job. We need a barn burner and a bomb thrower in public and a Rahm Emanuel/Harold Iches behind-the-scenes.someone who knows enough to take a knife to a knife fight and will not shrink from using it. Michael Steele can play neither role.

Does anyone see any evidence whatsoever that the Republican Party will not continue sleepwalking into the third election in a row?

[Captain Kirk]

So much for the fairy tale that “every single vote counts.” In the rare case when an election like this is this close, it is now thrown out!

[dools007]

Hmmm, let’s see. A majority of Americans voted for a man who has yet to establish where he was born. And you’re worried about a little thing like the 17th Amendment. Tsk, tsk.

[CharlesWayneCT]

But a controversial decision by the state's Elections Canvassing Board could end up throwing the election into the lap of the Senate itself, a scholar told Minnesota Public Radio.

If he really said the canvassing board decision was "controversial", he isn't much of a scholar.

The Canvassing board decided based on the law, and the decision was correct.

We don't pick some small subset of the voters, and decide to treat THEIR ballots with extra-special care and concern for their intent.

Sure, there might be absentee ballots that were incorrectly rejected.

But there were also likely hundreds of people who tried to vote who were improperly rejected, another hundreds who weren't informed of a move in their precinct, another hundreds who got hung up at work and couldn't properly exercise their intent.

We simply expect that the overall effect of these things average out, so that those who do make it to the polls and do properly vote will accurately reflect what would have happened with all those other voters.

[AmericanVictory]

The Constitution itself says quite plainly that the times, places and manners of selecting United States Senators shall be prescribed in each state by the legislatures rhereof. The amendment changed it to a popular election but how each senator is elected as to time place and manner of the popular election was not changed.

See the successful cert petition and remand in Hopfmann v. Connnolly about Kennedy’s 1982 primary election.

[murron]

Will Norm Coleman be the deciding vote? And will it be the current Senate, or the incoming Senate?

[daler]

As always, the GOP brings a knife to a gunfight.

And, as always, the Democrats bring a bazooka.

[Smokin' Joe]

I am not sure. Perhaps someone else can answer that.

[Keith in Iowa]

Coleman Lawyers Up: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022179.php

[ReignOfError]

Ultimately, the courts. The exact boundaries of the power aren’t defined, so a court will have to decide the question, if it’s pressed that far.

[ReignOfError]

In the Adam Clayton Powell case, SCOTUS ruled that the House’s power to judge qualifications was limited to the constitutional qualifications for the office. Powell was expelled by the House, but re-elected by his constituents; the House could expel him again, a power that has no limit I know of, but could not refuse to seat him.

Similarly, the Senate’s power to judge elections would, presumably, be limited to the facts of the vote count. The courts could throw out a determination of fact without a sufficient basis, as courts sometimes do with jury verdicts.