Free Republic

Norm Coleman’s campaign hasn’t yet filed its expected appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but partisans are already gearing up for what could be the next flashpoint in the Coleman-Al Franken Senate contest — the backgrounds of Minnesota’s high court justices. The Coleman and Franken camps have not expressed any sign of public concern about any of the five jurists who would hear their case. And neither side has requested any recusals. But as Coleman prepares to take his argument to Minnesota’s top court in a bid to keep his slim election hopes alive, and as Democrats implore him to...

~ EXCERPT ~ Democrat Al Franken has started using the title “Senator-elect,” despite the fact that his contest with Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has not yet been decided. A Minnesota court is currently hearing Coleman’s challenge to the recount. A press release sent out by his staff Monday announcing a series of town halls with local mayors reads: “Sen.-elect Franken held the first in a series of roundtable discussions with Minnesota Mayors today in St. Paul. Franken and metro-area mayors discussed the economic realities facing their cities, budget cuts, President Obama's measures for economic stimulus, and how to grow Minnesota’s...

ST. PAUL -- The trial on Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount stalled on its first day Monday when the judges said photocopies of 5,000 excluded absentee ballots couldn't be used as evidence because Republican Norm Coleman's campaign workers had marked on them. Coleman's lawsuit argues in part that local election officials wrongly rejected many absentee ballots. Democrat Al Franken has a 225-vote lead and says any flaws are not substantial enough that they resulted in the wrong man winning. The marks the campaign workers made included, in some cases, numbering or redaction of private information. After a Coleman witness admitted to...

George Soros is the biggest sugar daddy of the Democratic Party, and naturally wants to ensure that the Democrats have a monopoly of power in America. Recently, I wrote an article for American Thinker on the role that George Soros has played in helping the Democrat Al Franken in his race against the Republican incumbent Norm Coleman for a Senate seat in Minnesota. However, there may be one other reason that Soros was determined that Norm Coleman in particular lose his seat. This was personal. Norm Coleman was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and as...

ST. PAUL, Minn. | The campaigns of Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken wrangled Monday over hundreds of unopened absentee ballots that could still tip Minnesota's Senate race. Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the Secretary of State's Office without agreement on which ballots to open or how many should be under consideration. That leaves the heavy lifting to a series of regional meetings that begin Tuesday. The ballots that make the cut at those meetings will be opened in St. Paul by Monday. Those ballots are important because Mr. Franken leads Mr....

ST. PAUL, MN – Minnesotans have turned to schoolyard protocol in a last ditch effort to solve their Senate conundrum. Following a 2-month recount that has still not determined a winner in the Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken, officials have decided on an age-old method to settle the matter – Rock Paper Scissors!

While Al “Globull Fraud” Gore continues to make the following public statement: "Washington needs a breath of fresh air. Al Franken is a great man, a great activist, and will be a great leader in the U.S. Senate" … it is important to remember the real Al Franken. The fact is Franken has been an unsuccessful hack his entire life. His only “accomplishment” in life was video taping sex with Arianna “The Greek Leona Helmsley” Huffington. Now Franken, and the Democrats-Soros Shadow Party, wants America to believe that “the new Al” is fit to be a U.S. Senator of...

MINNESOTA BALLOTS: LAND OF TEN THOUSAND FAKESDecember 10, 2008 What is the point of having a hand recount of ballots in the Minnesota Senate race if the Democratic secretary of state is going to use the election night totals in precincts where it will benefit Democrat Al Franken? Either the hand recount produces a better, more accurate count, or there was no point to the state spending roughly $100,000 to conduct the hand recount in the first place. But that is exactly what the George Soros-supported secretary of state has agreed to do in the case of a Dinkytown precinct...

This is just too perfect. Earlier today, noting that none of the network morning shows explicitly identified Rod Blagojevich as a Democrat, I wondered out loud how a Republican would be treated in like circumstances. It's taken less than three hours to get our answer. Let's preface this by saying that Norm Coleman is not, repeat not, the target of an investigation. To mention him anywhere within a million miles of Blago is unfair. I'm citing the MSNBC coverage just for purposes of illustrating the double standard. At about 11:20 AM ET, here's how Contessa Brewer threw it to Norah...

As we noted last night, Minnesota's Senate recount is over, with just one precinct outstanding. That precinct is Minneapolis's Ward 3, Precinct 1, where election officials found that 133 more votes were recorded on a voting machine than there were ballots inside the machine. That discrepancy has triggered a hunt for the 133 "missing" ballots. Several journalists from other states have asked us about the discrepancy between the vote totals as reported by the Minnesota Secretary of State and by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Currently, the Secretary of State shows Norm Coleman leading by 687 votes with a single precinct...

It has been over a month since the democrats swept the election and in true demo fashion, some are still refusing to let go of the battles this simply did not win.... Considering the gains they've made in the 2006 election as well as the 2008 election, you think their need for world domination would be satiated...but in keeping with the tradition of being a whiny liberal, it is not. In the still "undecided" Minnesota Senate race, comedian turned politician Al Fraken is still holding on to some hope that he can take this race from incumbent Senator Norm Coleman....

In every recount of the senate election from Minnesota, incumbent senator Norm Coleman has consistently been ahead of challenger Al Franken by hundreds of votes. At this point it looks like it will be impossible for Franken to exceed Coleman's total in the recount of the few ballots remaining. So what is the solution of New York Times guest columnist and associate professor of journalism at New York University, Charles Seife? Why just declare the election a "statistical tie" and flip a coin to determine the winner. Seife explains how he has come up with his laughable resolution for the...

Coleman Expands Lead Over Franken in Minn. Senate Recount Tuesday, December 2, 2008 1:19 PM By: David A. Patten With more than 92 percent of the recount now complete, Sen. Norm Coleman’s lead over Democratic rival Al Franken has stretched to 340 votes, an increase of about 70 votes in the past 24 hours. While 70 votes is a fraction of the nearly 3 million votes cast in the election, every vote could be critical to Coleman’s hopes of heading off a U.S. Senate investigation into Minnesota election procedures. Such a review could take months to resolve. “Size matters,” Larry...

With 91 percent of ballots recounted, Norm Coleman leads by 344 votes in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. Coleman held a 215-vote lead over Franken after Election Day. Between now and Nov. 4, Coleman has lost 2,369 votes, and Al Franken has lost 2,498 votes. By Friday, all of the state's 87 counties should be done with their collective review of 2.9 million ballots. Dec. 16, the canvassing board will gather to rule on 2,876 ballots challenged by Franken and 3,067 ballots challenged by Coleman. While it looks like Coleman is leading, it's hard to say how secure his spot is....

The setback at the Canvassing Board has forced Al Franken to face the fact that he didn’t get enough valid votes to beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate Race. With the rejection of his bid to get the panel to add in thousands of rejected absentee ballots, there seems little chance that the remaining 15% of ballots left in the recount will produce the kind of change that 85% has not. What’s a surly, self-absorbed DFL candidate to do? Sue. Minnesota’s U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel’s...

The State Canvassing Board, a panel of five arbiters charged with determining the winner in the overtime election tussle between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic rival Al Franken, unanimously voted this morning to deny the Franken campaign's request that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount. During the discussion, the board members stressed that they weren't rejecting the merits of the arguments made by Franken's attorneys. They also made it clear they expect the issue to be litigated separately from the recount procedure. Also this morning, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who chairs the Canvassing Board, said that...

On Dec. 8, 2000, supporters of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush burst into cheers in the rotunda of the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla. They had just learned of a judge's ruling that absentee ballots cast in pro-Bush counties would not be thrown out. They taunted supporters of Democrat Al Gore with the song that baseball fans sing when an opposing pitcher is knocked out of the game. "Na-na-na-nah, hey hey, good-bye!" they chanted. Bush was pronounced the winner of the state of Florida, and the presidency, four days later, and the preservation of those "absentees" was a...

Things may not be going as well as Al Franken hoped in the recount, but don't tell that to Nate Silver. The numbers junkie behind FiveThirtyEight.com predicts that Franken will win the recount — once all challenges are resolved — by 27 votes. (Related: Franken losing ground to Coleman on DFL turf How'd he come up with that number? It's little complex — OK, that's an understatement — but Silver basically did a regression analysis using recounted precincts where there were few or no challenged ballots (Franken has done well there) and projected it across the rest of the state....

A correspondent writes: Just returned [from Crystal]. We counted the last three precincts without incident. Then the City Clerk made the announcement that she had found some absentee ballots that had not been processed yet from another previously closed precinct, Ward 4 Precinct 2. Apparently Friday afternoon she was given the order by SOS [the Secretary of State] to release the names of voters who had their ballots rejected. While canvassing the absentee ballots she found 8 ballots bound together that had not been processed on election night. She claimed they were valid ballots that had been filled out by...

Some national media types are trying to make it sound like the Coleman-Franken recount sound like Florida 2000. It’s time to deflate that myth. The minute that public hears that someone has to determine voter intent, they first flash back to Florida’s butterfly ballots, then think of the punch cards ballots. While it’s natural to do that, that isn’t the case. In Florida 2000, people were debating voter intent based on the chad family (dimpled, pregnant or hanging.) Minnesota’s ballots are extremely straightforward. When determining voter intent, here’s some things to look for: 1) Did the voter fill in the...