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| Minnesota SC rules for Franken in Senate fight |
| 2009-06-30 |
| ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race. The high court rejected a legal challenge from Republican Norm Coleman, whose options for regaining the Senate seat are dwindling. Justices said Franken is entitled to the election certificate he needs to assume office. With Franken and the usual backing of two independents, Democrats will have a big enough majority to overcome Republican filibusters. Coleman hasn't ruled out seeking federal court intervention. Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the earliest Franken would be seated is next week because the Senate is out of session for the July 4th holiday. Coleman's appeal hinged largely on whether thousands of absentee votes had been unfairly rejected by local election officials around the state. The unanimous court wrote that "because the legislature established absentee voting as an optional method of voting, voters choosing to use that method are required to comply with the statutory provisions." They went on to say that "because strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee voting is, and always has been required, there is no basis on which voters could have reasonably believed that anything less than strict compliance would suffice." |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #7 How many clowns in the Senate? One more. |
| Posted by: Muggsy Glink 2009-06-30 23:03 |
| #6 I am the Senator Landslide Franken, I will make worse what's already achin', Don't blame me for Minnesotans voting, I do my best work to help them counting, O marvelous me, o marvelous me, I am a Senator for all to see. Only an idiot would vote for me, That's a large part of the voters you see, O marvelous me, O marvelous me, I am a Senator for all to see. |
| Posted by: whatadeal 2009-06-30 18:13 |
| #5 To jog memories, Coleman led Franken by 215 votes election night. Then selective counting happened: Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact. Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead. During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials. But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition. The 2000 Bush-Gore election should have drilled into every Repub skull to never give an inch to Dem selective counting schemes. And make sure all ballots are guarded around the clock lest overwhelmingly Dem ballots are "found" in filing cabinets. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-06-30 17:06 |
| #4 what a sad day for Minnesota...the MORON of MORONS in the senate.....words escape me |
| Posted by: Jarong de Medici3580 2009-06-30 16:15 |
| #3 We elected the Pirate Party, you elected the Clowns. |
| Posted by: Lagom 2009-06-30 16:13 |
| #2 Enjoy the day and his entire tenure in office. I can't even imagine what one of FrankenFurter's 'townhall sessions' will be like. A JokeFest? Oh wait, he wasn't really that funny in person to begin with. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2009-06-30 15:17 |
| #1 Congratulations Minnesotans! You now have the leadership you overwhelmingly ask for and so richly deserve. Let's not have any bitc*ing or whining now. Enjoy the day and his entire tenure in office. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-06-30 15:02 |