Posted on 04/02/2009 6:43:59 AM PDT by MinnesotaLibertarian
The legal fight between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is headed to the desk of Gov. Tim Pawlenty — a no-win predicament for a Minnesota Republican with his eye on a White House run in 2012.
Franken won big Tuesday when a three-judge panel allowed the review of no more than 400 absentee ballots in a race he currently leads by 225 votes. Coleman’s camp says an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is coming; once that’s done, the dispute lands in Pawlenty’s lap.
If Franken’s ahead at that point, Pawlenty will have a choice: sign the election certificate that will allow Democrats to seat Franken in the Senate or play to the Republicans whose support he’d need in 2012 by withholding the certificate while Coleman challenges the election in the federal court system.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Ballots *found* in the back seat of a car allowed to be counted as legitimate regardless the obvious violation of chain of custody ...
A man lies dead on a bar floor, a knife in his back. Just because no one as yet has been accused, charged, tried and convicted of murder doesn't mean there isn't proof.
Thanks for the ping!
But there is the case that in multiple precincts, the replacements for “spoiled” ballots weren’t properly marked, and then in the recount the added the original spoiled ballots back in without removing the replacement ballots since they weren’t properly marked, meaning that some ballots were double-counted.
And there is the case where 133 ballots were missing in the recount, and the board decided to go back to the election-night count, when the law clearly states that if a recount is ordered, only those ballots which can be recounted are legal, and they have to use the recount vote.
And there is the case that Coleman submitted a set of absenttee ballots for consideration, and they were rejected falsely as being “too late”.
If Franken won, then he won, but he shouldn’t win because he got democratic operatives to accept his hand-selected absentee ballots counted, while ballots pretty much known to be republican were rejected.
And of course, we all saw by pictures how the board screwed up the recounting of poorly marked ballots — the public time and again selecting outcomes on those ballots favorable to COleman, only to have the board mysteriously reject Coleman ballots but accept dubious Franken ballots.
Anyone that has been following this on FR knows that it is Franken and ACORN and the democratic party that are seeped in voter fraud in this election.
And then being reported in papers and on TV by the Media, a wing of the DNC.
The republicans have a record of not fighting voter fraud, in fact catering to it thinking they can outdo the democrats.
Referencing their wooing the illegal alien insurgent criminal invading colonist vote and the welfare plantation vote.
Which is stupid, you can't compete with the dems for the illegal and welfare votes.
Kinda like them thinking they could run dem lite with McCain and be successful.
Pawlenty should ask himself WWSD.
[What Would Sarah Do]
I don't expect him to man up.
I predicted from the very beginning when Franken and his lackeys started changing votes etc that the fraudulent criminal dems would win this election through voter fraud.
The GOP history, highlighted back in the nineties with B1 Bob Dornan (a very provable example of voter fraud), is historically not inspired to fight voter fraud.
We need a two party system in this country
: > )
Pawlenty has as much chance as Romney in 2012 - that is to say, none.
This is what Coleman’s argument is, but that’s not the same as “fraud”, which many others are accusing. Honestly, I didn’t really see any good way to resolve the situation with the missing duplicates/missing originals issue. We don’t want to overcount or undercount the votes. Considering the number of ballots cast statewide, it’s impressive there were as few mistakes as there were, but in an election this close, it matters. Both campaigns of course are going to try and bend it in such a way that they think the count will be more favorable towards them, much like Al Gore tried to do in Florida. The Secretary of State here is a DFL hack, but the courts are pretty balanced, so at some point, we have to just accept that the process has run its course. I watched the board ruling on a lot of the ballots, and it looked to me they were being fair. They even eliminated a few Franken ballots that I thought looked legit. I think a new election could be a better solution, but the law doesn’t provide for it. Honestly, if Coleman wants to fight this and leave the seat empty, that’s preferable to having either of those two as Senator.
Oh, I agree completely, but he THINKS he has a chance, so it’ll factor into his decision. I’m also skeptical he’ll be able to win another term as Governor, since he won both of his previous races by slim pluralities with a strong run from a left-leaning third party.
I thought the original recount was mandated by law... no?
You know that that story was debunked, right?
Recounts are usually triggered by a certain amount of vote separation, in other words how many votes separate the winner from the loser. Recounts can be asked for an granted to either candidate as long as they pay for the recount with their own money no matter how many votes separate the candidates. It depends on the State as to how many votes trigger a recount.
I’d feel OK with it if they treated everything the same. If they always counted the ballots, or always rejected them.
It just doesn’t look like equal treatment.
Still when you back up, you have to realize that if you are fighting over a 200-vote margin, either candidate would be a reasonable “winner”. That’s so few votes that the margin could be effected by who was sick that day, who got held up late at work, who was out of town, who simply mis-marked their ballots.
At some point we get too wrapped up in figuring out who absolutely got the most votes. If it’s that close, it would probably be better to just accept the machine election night counts and pretend it’s all good.
In any case, half your electorate is going to be sure they were robbed.
Erm ... obviously, no, otherwise I would not have made my post. I've never heard anyone who made the claim, not Glenn or Sean on the radio, retract their own comments and your link is the first I've seen posted.
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