Free Republic

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...

WHO IS MARK RITCHIE? A COMPLETE BACKGROUND Photo from Team Franken’s Flickr page(1) of non-partisan Secretary of State Mark Ritchie speaking at a Minnesota Democrats event earlier this year. UPDATE: Liberal supporters of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (Media Matters)(2) are trying to defend him from the accusation that his candidacy had been promoted by the Communist Party USA. As the blogger who broke the story about his candidacy being promotion by the Communist Party USA, please see the links below to my original posts. I wrote my first post about Mark Ritchie in September 2005, and I have since...