Free Republic

A review of Minnesota’s statewide database of registered voters revealed at least 2,812 deceased individuals voted in last November’s general election, according to a new report by the “traditional values” advocacy group Minnesota Majority. After obtaining the list of voters who participated in November’s election, the group hired an independent firm who specializes in “death suppression” for direct mailing lists to review the data. The process, which involved matching names and addresses to state death records, bore troubling results. According to Minnesota statute 201.13, the commissioner of health is to report monthly the name, address, date of birth, and county...

Democrat Al Franken's lead in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race has grown to 312 votes now that hundreds of absentee ballots have been added to the counting. A three-judge panel ruled that the rejected absentee ballots should be opened and counted after hearing weeks of testimony in a lawsuit brought by Republican Norm Coleman. Franken led by 225 votes going into Tuesday's count of those absentee ballots. The judges allowed 351 absentees into the count and Franken picked up more of them than Coleman did. Other issues are still pending in Coleman's lawsuit, and he has said he will appeal to...

- - Absentee ballots to be counted will be far fewer than Coleman sought in effort to close the U.S. Senate gap. Abstract: Norm Coleman's lawyers all but conceded defeat Tuesday and promised to appeal after a panel of three judges ordered no more than 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than the Republican had sought to overcome the lead held by DFLer Al Franken. The ballots include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened in his quest to overcome the 225-vote lead that Franken gained after a...

ST. PAUL – Ben Ginsberg, legal counsel to the Coleman for Senate campaign, tonight made the following statement: “Tonight’s decision from the court is a stinging defeat for Al Franken. It underscores that the Coleman contest will proceed, that there will be a trial, and that every valid vote will be counted and counted only once. This victory for the voters of Minnesota should serve as another strong reminder to Harry Reid and Al Franken that they can’t just dismiss for their convenience the legal process in Minnesota. This will allow Minnesota voters whose votes have not yet been counted,...

The three-judge panel assigned to oversee the upcoming recount trial between Norm Coleman and Al Franken heard arguments this afternoon on Franken's motion to dismiss the case. After lawyers for Republican Coleman and DFLer Franken made their cases, the judges said they would take the case under advisement. They gave no sign of when a decision would come. The trial is scheduled to begin Monday. Franken attorney David Burman argued today that both state law and the Constitutions of Minnesota and the United States limit what state courts may do in reviewing the recount, and that remaining issues should be...

In another twist in Minnesota's prolonged U.S. Senate race, Republican Norm Coleman's campaign has subpoenaed Secretary of State elections manager Gary Poser, claiming discrepancies between recount figures reported by local officials and those posted on the Secretary of State's website. Campaign attorney Tony Trimble said Coleman could have lost 10 to 15 votes because of changes the Secretary of State's office made to local recount figures. "It's a minor issue in the scheme of things," Trimble said. Still, in an election where final recount figures left Coleman trailing by only 225 votes, the subpoena underscores how he is leaving no...

- - Will Ask Three Judge Panel To Determine Which Ballots Were Wrongly Rejected ST. PAUL – Fritz Knaak, lead recount attorney for the Coleman for Senate campaign today made the following statement: “Next week begins an important step in getting to an accurate and valid number, and to determine who really won the 2008 United States Senate election. As we indicated at the end of the canvassing board proceedings, we believe the process was broken. And, one area where it clearly broke and has yet to be fixed is in the area of rejected absentee ballots. The discrepancies, problems...

Anyone following the recount has no doubt heard the bluster and bravado regularly coming from the Al Franken campaign. However, in recent days, Franken and his Washington legal team have seemed awfully desperate for a campaign that is trying to convince people they are winning. They have now tried to shove Al Franken onto the Senate floor through three separate venues – only be to be rebuffed and delayed because their effort clearly violates Minnesota law. Why, if they claim to have a lead, are they so desperately anxious to put Al Franken in a Senate seat? Simple: They know...

Three judges put on the bench by governors of three political parties will hear the highly charged election lawsuit that stands between Minnesota and its second U.S. senator. The panel named Monday by the state's highest court will preside over a Republican Norm Coleman's court case that seeks to overturn Democrat Al Franken's 225-vote advantage following a long recount. The case is expected to take months to resolve. The three district judges are:

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...

Al Franken cannot yet legally be named the winner of Minnesota's troubled senatorial contest despite the swell of partisan support pushing to end election challenges and seat the former Saturday Night Live comic, according to the head of the nation's largest organization of Republican lawyers. Michael B. Thielen, executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association, tells Newsmax' Ashley Martella in an exclusive video interview that Minnesota's recount efforts have been "consistently inconsistent" and plagued by "outright fraud." As a result, it will require court intervention to sort out the election mess and determine a certifiable candidate, he adds.

<p>ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Republican Norm Coleman is suing to challenge Democrat Al Franken's apparent recount victory in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. At a news conference Tuesday, Coleman says he won't accept a board's determination that Franken won 225 more votes in the November election. The lawsuit will keep the seat vacant for weeks or months. State law prevents officials from issuing an election certificate until legal matters are resolved.</p>

As John F. Kennedy once said, "sometimes partisanship demands too much." Watching Al Franken and the Democrats steal this election, vote by vote, is a horrific sight that makes a mockery of the electoral process, the fundamental element in our democracy. If this travesty is allowed to stand, it essentially means that any close election constitutes an open invitation to steal the victory. We must not allow the Minnesota Democrats to get away with this election heist. The Republican National Lawyers Association is litigating the issue and needs all the support they can get to fund their court case. Those...

FOX "The O'Reilly Factor"Video: "Minnesota Madness" Segment Aired Friday, January 9, 2008       Bill and two Republican guests(1) discuss Hollywood’s and George Soros massive donations to elected “Porn-o-Rama” Franken. This includes, a rare and calculated move(2), by George Soros who personally held a large post-election Franken fundraiser at his residence in New York City to support Al in the ballot recount/contest(3). I wrote about and published the list of Hollywood/high profile Franken donors three days before this news piece, not that this was new Soros Shadow Party news for anyone that has closely followed/been involved in this Coleman-Franken fiasco....

Alan Page, the former NFL star and Minnesota Supreme Court justice who will choose the panel of judges that will effectively determine the next senator of Minnesota, is a staunch critic of the controversial method used to decide which absentee ballots would be included in the recount – a major complaint of GOP Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign. State law says the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, Paul Magnuson, should appoint the three-judge panel to hear Coleman’s appeal. Magnuson, however, served on the Canvassing Board that issued many of the rulings that the three-member panel will be asked to...

The highly publicized vote recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman is shining a light on Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the state’s chief election officer. Ritchie is chairman of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which on Monday certified that Franken received 225 more votes than Coleman did. Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to a liberal 527 group, the Secretary of State Project, which says its goal is to “ensure fair, clean elections” by replacing conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats. “I want to thank the Secretary of State...

- - Coleman Campaign Moves To Stop Double-Counting Of Votes. Double Counting Means There Will be More Votes Counted than Votes Cast on Election Day ST. PAUL – In a petition filed with the Minnesota Supreme Court today, the Coleman for Senate campaign has requested the Court to prevent the Minnesota State Canvassing Board from including double-counted votes in its recount totals. The petition seeks to have precincts which now have more votes than voters reconcile their ballots so that the Canvassing Board's numbers are accurate. The campaign also asks that the Court imposes the vote totals in these precincts...

The state canvassing board finished up its second day of sorting through challenged ballots Wednesday and said it hoped to be done with all challenges in the U.S. Senate race by the end of the week. But Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the board would not certify a winner Friday, and there were new signs that court challenges lie ahead and could push Minnesota's process of selecting a Senator into 2009. (LEGAL ISSUE 1) One issue that could end up in court involves "duplicate" ballots -- ballots filled in on Election Day if there's something wrong with a voter's...

An attorney for Norm Coleman's re-election campaign told Minnesota Supreme Court justices today that the idea the estimated 1,600 rejected absentee ballots in the Senate recount fit neatly into a category is an illusion. The court heard arguments this afternoon on the campaign's petition to stop counties from adding wrongly rejected absentee ballots to their recount totals, or at least set uniform rules as to how counties should open and count those ballots. St. Paul, Minn. — The Supreme Court heard the arguments without its Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson. Both have recused themselves from the...

At this rate, Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount will never end. More ballot challenges were added to the recount Tuesday than were resolved by the state Canvassing Board. "We're at the mercy of the campaigns," a slightly weary Chief Justice Eric Magnuson said, after asking whether there wasn't some kind of deadline to raise challenges. His comments came as the board took the first steps in its Sisyphian trek through 1,500 challenged ballots in the disputed race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. The five-member panel ruled on about 160 challenges made only by Franken's campaign -- with...