Free Republic

Al Franken confirmed to MN senate by MN supreme court.

Al Franken is now their president.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee spent almost $1 million last month on Republican Norm Coleman's attempt to win last year's U.S. Senate race. Coleman is attempting to overturn Democrat Al Franken's slender lead. The former senator's appeal of a trial court's decision that Franken won is awaiting a ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court. That ruling could be issued any day. Last month, the NRSC spent $937,917 to help Coleman in that effort. Minneapolis law firm Dorsey & Whitney, home to Coleman attorney Jim Langdon, received $350,171 of that and Washington, D.C., law firm Patton Boggs, Coleman legal spokesman Ben...

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...

A majority of Minnesota voters want Republican Norm Coleman to concede so Democrat Al Franken can take Coleman's seat in the U.S. Senate, a new Rasmussen poll reveals.... 54 percent of respondents want Coleman to concede, and 41 percent are opposed to a Coleman concession. 63 percent say they expect Franken to eventually take the Senate seat, no matter what Coleman does; in December, 67 percent expected Coleman to win. If the Minnesota Supreme Court upholds a lower-court ruling that Franken won, 67 percent of respondents want Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to sign an election certificate allowing the Senate to...

Al Franken asked the Minnesota Supreme Court on Monday to affirm his victory in the 2008 Senate race and hand down a ruling that would direct Gov. Tim Pawlenty to certify him the winner. “We think the law is clear,” said Franken's lead attorney, Marc Elias, pointing to a state Supreme Court ruling on the matter in February that he said indicated “that the certification would issue after the state court process ended.” The Minnesota “Supreme Court is the end of the state court process,” Elias noted. The request came as part of Franken’s reply brief to Republican Norm Coleman’s...

Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others... ...Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate...

Over five months after the election, a three-judge panel has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race. The judges issued their final ruling late Monday, stating "Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election." They also have determined that Franken is entitled to receive the certificate of election. Last week, Republican Norm Coleman suffered a blow after a few hundred previously rejected absentee ballots were opened and counted at the tail end of Coleman's lawsuit contesting his loss in a statewide recount. They broke almost 2-to-1 for...

If he keeps up the fight, he is likely to lose, unnecessarily deprive Minnesota of a second senator, end his political career seen as a sore loser, and hurt his party in a state that is eager for this fight to be over. His team has talked enough about further legal challenges that if he leaves now, he will get some points for grace. (Needless to say, that sentiment would not be universal.) But this is, I think, the last moment where he can exit with some dignity....

In its recent order, the three-judge election contest court in Minnesota reiterated a common theme during the Coleman versus Franken Senate recount--notwithstanding the numerous questions raised regarding the fairness of the election, "Citizens of Minnesota should be proud of their electoral system, a system which has one of the highest voter-participation rates in the country." The court emphasized: "the facts presented thus far do not show a wholesale disenfranchisement of absentee voters in the 2008 general election." Accordingly, without any discussion of those facts, the court refused to review several groups of absentee ballots including many rejected ballots from military...

First Recount Ruling Benefits Franken By Shira Toeplitz Roll Call Staff March 31, 2009, 5:36 p.m. . In another boost to Democrat Al Franken’s case in the ongoing Minnesota Senate recount trial, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that only 400 previously rejected absentee ballots will be delivered to the secretary of state to be reviewed. With a margin of 225 votes separating Franken from Republican Norm Coleman, it’s unlikely that the additional ballots could swing the election in Coleman’s favor. An initial count of the ballots that were ordered to be reviewed showed that 167 of them were from the...

""Wikileaks" explained in an earlier email that it was making public the information on Coleman's donors, including their credit card numbers, because of the "Coleman campaign's effort to impugn the election processes in the State of Minnesota." As a result of Wikileak's mass email of a spread sheet containing credit card information for thousands of Coleman donors, the Coleman campaign sent an email to its supporters today suggesting that they cancel their credit cards."

Will the Minnesota Senate race end up in the U.S. Supreme Court? Here's an article saying it might. Gov. Tim Pawlenty says Sen. Norm Coleman has "a plausible chance, a decent chance" to prevail. He says a second election is "highly unlikely" under Minnesota law. But couldn't that law be changed? My understanding is that the legal case currently before a three-judge panel is hopelessly compromised. Previous rulings in different counties have been inconsistent, with ballots with one kind of alleged defect counted in some counties and ballots with the same kind of alleged defect not counted in others. Most...

Al Franken, the Minnesota Democratic senatorial candidate, apparently considers Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle to be role models. Because the unfunny former comedian still owes more than $70,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties to 17 states. When the problems were discovered, Franken immediately threw his accountant of 18 years under the bus. The poor accountant could only say, “I’ve been told to say ‘no comment.’” Referring to Daschle’s withdrawal, President Obama said, “Ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules. You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary...

Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken has told a Minnesota court he would agree to the opening and possible counting of almost 1,600 still-sealed absentee ballots. In a Saturday filing, Franken's lawyers submitted a list of absentee voters whose rejected ballots they want to give another look. About half the voter names also appear on a longer list compiled by Republican Norm Coleman. The rest are distinct from the Coleman roster.

If one can achieve some emotional detachment from the stakes involved, the Coleman-Franken recount and election contest may provide entertainment value. The role reversals alone are a fertile source of comedy. Immediately following the election, trailing Senator Coleman by an incredibly narrow margin, Al Franken began the traditional Democratic "count every vote" drumbeat. Franken instituted litigation to accompany the drumbeat. Working through a maze including a trip to the Minnesota Supreme Court that led to the inclusion of 933 previously rejected absentee ballots with Senator Coleman's agreement, Franken emerged at the end of the recount with a 225-vote lead. Yet...

I just talked about the "gun show loophole" myth yesterday, and now we're seeing such a bill in Minnesota. Gun control advocates are taking another stab at changing a state law that allows people to buy handguns and assault rifles without a background check from unlicensed dealers. One problem right from the get-go is that these "unlicensed dealers" aren't dealers at all, any more than someone who sells his used car is a car dealer, or someone who puts his house on the market is a real estate agent. A similar bill got nowhere in the legislature last year, but...

Today was the 16th day of the Minnesota court proceedings to determine which of the ballots from the senate campaign will be counted resulting in a definitive answer whether Norm Coleman or Al Franken will be representing the state in the US Senate. Coleman has been a daily attendee at the trial, participating in the case to determine his political future and making himself available to the press. Franken on the other hand, has behaved more like a Borscht Belt Comedian doing his Florida Circuit for a few weeks. In this critical time for his nascent political career, he has...

Dealing a blow but not a knockout to Republican Norm Coleman's hopes, the judges in the U.S. Senate election trial on Friday tossed out most of the 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots they were considering for a second look, making it clear that they won't open and count any ballots that don't comply with state law. On its face, the ruling looked to be a victory for DFLer Al Franken, whose lawyers had urged the judges to turn down 17 of the 19 categories and said Friday that they had very nearly done it. "We are obviously very pleased...

A lawyer for Republican Norm Coleman said Wednesday that Minnesota's Senate trial could go faster thanks to a judicial order likely to cut the absentee ballots that have to be reconsidered. The three-judge panel set out 19 different reasons that uncounted absentee ballots were rejected in the race between Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. They've ordered both candidates to submit arguments by the end of the trial day Wednesday on whether those ballots could be ruled in or out by category — rather than considered one by one. "If they pull out certain categories, those are categories we won't be...