While most pundits are focused on the scandal surrounding the Democratic Governor of Illinois, few people are paying much attention to the shenanigans of the Democrats in Minnesota.
Shortly, after November 4, when all the ballots were counted, Republican Norm Coleman led his Democratic challenger Al Franken by about 300 votes. As the recount concluded, Coleman led by a smalerr margin, minuscule in terms of percentage of the vote, but a margin nonetheless. So, you’d think that Franken would concede defeat.
But, no, not for Democrats in close elections. Just like in Washington State in 2004, Democrats weren’t satisfed when Republican Dino Rossi led the first count and then the recount, so moveon.org paid for yet another recount, ballots were discovered in King County (Seattle–the most liberal juridiction in the state) and, presto chango!, Democrat Christine Gregoire eked out a win.
Or, recall Florida in 2000. Each successive recount showed George W. Bush with a lead, but Al Gore wanted to keep counting. You see, Democrats want to keep counting until they win (while they seek to exclude ballots which tend to favor Republicans).
And they’re trying that in Minnesota, with Franken raising the issue of the “Fifth Pile” of rejected absentee ballots only as it was becoming clear that he would not win the recount.
On Friday, the Minnesota Canvassing Board “recommended that all counties include the absentee ballots that were unfairly rejected on Election Day in the recount.“ On its face, that sounds like a good decision. The only problem is that the board didn’t set a uniform standard, thus allowing election boards in each of the state’s 87 counties to use their own discretion in determining which ballots to count and which to exclude:
Beyond that, the fundamental point is that there is no standard to guide the counties as they create (or don’t create) “fifth piles.” Some counties will say that unsigned ballots should be counted–contrary to the statute–as long as they were signed by an election judge. Others won’t. Numerous other, similar issues will arise. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that the most partisan counties will take the most liberal approach and put as many ballots as possible into the fifth pile. Those counties are, without exception, controlled by the Democratic Party: Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis. They are also the state’s biggest counties.
And many of these “fifth pile” absentee ballots, apparently for Franken, mysteriously appeared in “some strongly Democratic counties such as St. Louis counties,” after election day.
Eight years ago, the media pilloried then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for less than the strange goings-on in the Gopher State. If a Republican state Secretary of State had ties to a conservative group with legal problems as Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has to ACORN, you can bet the media would make an issue of it. But, only conservatives have questioned his ties (e.g. here) to that left-wing outfit often in trouble with the law.
Now that the Minnesota state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Coleman campaign’s “petition for a hearing regarding the issues raised by the Board of Canvassers’ ‘recommendation’ that Minnesota’s 87 counties certain previoulsy rejected absentee ballots,” there’s a chance the Democrats might not steal a Senate seat. But, they just might.
Thefts (and the thieving thieves who perpetrate them)
There is certainly too much “funny business” associated with the recount. Ballots appearing and disappearing. It is an embarrassment to the entire process.
Allowing a clown like Al Franken to win will be a very hard lesson for the state.
Al Frankin has neither wit nor wisdom. The democrat machine is at work here and it is not from Minnesota, in my estimation. This is big league stuff. Who did Al Gore call for recount expertise? The very heart and soul of fixing close elections, Mr. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago.
The election Doctor has a whole team of experts who figure the odds and then make it happen.
Is there a journalist left in the country? This is a perfect cover story for Popular Mechanics: “How the Daley Machine Fixes Elections.”
If he “wins” Frankin will be just another Pelosi useful idiot. Oh, I know, Pelosi is in the House. But she has a useful idiot at the head of the Senate and his job is to deliver the other useful idiots.
Yes.
There is also the issue of the 133 “missing” ballots in one heavily Democratic area. Local elections officials said these ballots didn’t exist, they were run through a counting machine twice by accident on Election Day, making the Election Day total wrong. That is exactly the kind of mistake that a recount is supposed to correct. If the recount isn’t supposed to correct such mistakes, there is no point in doing it. But, the partisan Soros-head that is running the recount (the Minnesota Secretary of State, Ritchie) arbitrarily decided to reject the recounted total and go with the mistaken Election Day total… in this one instance. Obviously because it will favor Franken.
Long story short, the Minnesota recount is not being conducted under Minnesota’s own rules nor under fair and uniform standards. It is being rigged and, as usual, the Republicans are combatting it with very little in the way of guts, confidence or self-esteem. Then again, considering the disgusting sins that some Republicans have been committing lately, maybe the Republicans should be weak, half-hearted and ashamed.
So thoroughly has the left swallowed the hatred for all things Republican that even a thoughtful senator like Coleman can be tossed in favor of a know-nothing, hate-filled, painfully unfunny conspiracy theorist. If Franken manages to “win”, expect to see other celebrities run for office “for the good of the country”. Senator Sean Penn, anyone? Congressman Matt Damon?
Caroline Kennedy is going to be running against Fran Drescher for the Democratic nomination for Mrs. Bill Clinton’s senate seat? (Both have expressed interest in the position.) The only reason I’d be in favor of Kennedy is to avoid Drescher’s voice as well as the interminable Nanny State references. To think that New Yorkers would choose either over Peter King is beyond sad.
I am flabbergasted that enough Minnesotans voted for Stuart Smalley to even make this close. (I know Minnesota has some screwy election laws like same-day registration, and I know ACORN was all over this, but still!)
I have lost all respect for the state of Minnesota: Mike Nelson, Jim Lileks, and Michelle Bachmann notwithstanding.
Off-topic, but I’ve heard that Gov. Blagojevich calls his grooming kit (Paul Mitchell brush, combs, hair product, etc.) “The Football” and is furious when his underlings don’t have it ready for him. He also wears powder blue running suits to work.
Makes you wonder. I just hope he goes for broke and brings ’em all down.
I am flabbergasted that enough Minnesotans voted for Stuart Smalley to even make this close.
Tells you something about the brand strength of the current GOP.
If a Republican state Secretary of State had ties to a conservative group with legal problems as Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has to ACORN
Sigh. You mean the fictitious “they turned in bad voter cards that they were bound by law to turn in anyway” legal problems? Or they Nevada GOP “raids” on their offices? Or the legal problems Free Republic and FOX keep talking about that don’t actually amount to anything?
[Sorry, torrent, they weren’t raids by the Nevada GOP. Go check your facts. The person who launched the raid in the Silver State was the Secretary of State, a man named Ross Miller, a Democrat. Dan.]
As far as the Equal Protection argument goes, what was the board supposed to do? In an election this astonishingly close, when we really don’t know who won yet, and when we *do* know that there were absentee ballots that even your original post admit were unfairly rejected on Election Day, we need to count those votes in order to determine the winner. The board is simply trying to get closer to the actual winner. Funny how the Republicans want to stop all that messy counting of actual votes.
Ed Morrissey has an interesting update:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/17/minnesota-recount-consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-canvassing-boards/
I think that, if both the Minnesota election board AND its Supreme Court demand consistency (the latter is going to end up setting the rules on how certain absentee ballots are counted or re-counted), Coleman has a chance. My prediction of a Franken win is premised on their inconsistency and hence, manipulation of the recount by Franken.
Funny how the Republicans want to stop all that messy counting of actual votes.
Funny how Democrats can’t win without counting large numbers of fraudulent votes.
I also have to say, does this Caroline Kennedy for Senate thing not prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the Democrats are the party of elite privilege?
Has Caroline Kennedy ever run a business? No. Has she ever run for office before? No. Has she confronted corruption in her own party? Heavens, no. Has she ever had to worry about keeping to a budget? Of course not.
No, her sole qualification is her pedigree, her blood-line connection to America’s elite political aristocracy. 232 years after the Declaration of Independence, we’re back to this: government by royalty.
But, granted, she is fully qualified to do what a senate Democrat is expected to do; display constant, fawning obeisance to the Dear Leader, Chairman 0.
torrent, here in Michigan, we have an AttyGen who did pursue criminal prosecutions of those very types of voter registration fraud perpped by ACORN volunteers… and the convicted are now serving time… for just this past election season. That’s even given that the AttYGen in 2007 was in bed with ACORN on the mortgage crisis meltdown.
YOU may think it doesn’t matter… just like some RINO couchpotato social-cons don’t think that Coleman’s lackluster conservative bonafides warrant concern over keeping Coleman in the Senate… but the truth is that a fair and accurate count according to the rules do matter in a nation built on the rule of law, not outcomes.
You offer “…we need to count those votes (rejected absentee ballots) in order to determine the winner”, the truth is that the State Canvassing Bd does NOT have the legal authority to review those absentee ballots rejected on Election Day by local clerks. It’s why the SCBd asked, requested, implored local clerks to go back and sort out those that were incorrectly rejected, review them for correctness, resubmit them if proper and adjust the totals. And were not even through the respective parties’ challenged ballots yet.
I think the fair thing to do, given that Minnesota’s election process is suspect, is to find a mechanism to hold a run-off election between the candidates. That would settle the matter in a final, indisputable fashion IF the candidates agreed. If the candidates don’t agree to that, it’s an election to be won by legal badgers not legal eagles… and that’s never a good outcome.
… just like some RINO couchpotato social-cons don’t think that Coleman’s lackluster conservative bonafides warrant concern over keeping Coleman in the Senate…
Coleman’s conservative bona fides are so lackluster that he shouldn’t be in the Senate, meaning he’s not conservative enough? RINO socio-cons (I’ll ignore the couch potato(e) jab) aren’t concerned he’s not conservative? And this so-called concern, no matter its source, should outweigh concern re. the alternative, i.e. Al Franken? And socio-cons should be concerned what an anti-socio-con thinks their issues and candidates should be?
I think that’s true, Ignatius; Coleman was perceived prior to the election as warmed over Dole and there were social-cons on this very site applauding her exit, stage left no less.
The more vocal social-cons have been long looking to purge the GOP of those who are not “true enuff, blue enuff” to claim a conservative label… Big Tent GOP goals get reduced to Democrat-lite nonsense allegations or the politics of hyphenation… just ask Gen Powell for the currency of that impulse inside the social-con arena. Or ask the former social-con poster boi, Tom Delay, about the sign he had installed outside his GOP House leadership office “No Moderates Need Apply”.
I’m surprised at all the social-con types who, without GOP credentials or evidence of past Party loyalty when it matters, seem to be concerned that Coleman might get cheated out of his seat.
Maybe it’s the specter of Franken validated that steams ’em… it sure isn’t some impulse to be fair or concerned about electoral integrity.
NancyP and Obama would have been checked nicely if the Senate still had GOPers like Chaffee, Dole and others in the majority.
A lot of people were a mite perturbed at Liddy Dole for spending millions of RNC dollars propping up Linc Chaffee in a primary against a Republican opponent. (You know, Linc Chaffee, the loyal Republican senator who hinted he would switch seats after the election to give Democrats the majority, the loyal Republican who endorsed Obama in 2008.) Meanwhile, George Allen, Jim Talent, and Conrad Burns lost their seats by a few thousand votes. It’s a shame the RNC didn’t have a few million extra lying around to help them out, isn’t it?
But the GOP’s problem isn’t Republicans with the true-blue loyalty of Lincoln Chaffee, and the strategic genius of Libby Dole. Nope, it’s all those darned social cons. Maybe the party should keep insulting them until they all leave. That will make the GOP strong again.
A number of my die-hard, liberal-forever friends told me that even they couldn’t stand the stink from Franken, and that they did not vote for him.
Hard to believe our state actually could send him to D.C. Y’know those folks who say “if so and so gets elected, then I’m leaving the country?” I feel like if Franken is our senator, I’ll have to find a new state!
Caroline Kennedy – a US Senator? Al Franken?
Amazing, isn’t it?
I might mention that neither has has held elected office… not even as mayor of a small town or governor of a state. (Kennedy is certainly not in the same league as Franken for pure noxiousness – I’ll give her that).
Michigan-Matt and the rest of the “Democats with other friends” in the Appeasement wing of the Republican Party are more than welcome to show us Social-cons how they can win an election with a “Moderate” Republican candidate, and without our support.
Oh, wait…
The problem is this election is closer than the margin of error – so no matter who “wins”, neither one has a mandate. Both ran disgusting and low road campaigns, and I can’t decide who I dislike more.
Just a minor correction:
Franken is not “angry” or “obnoxious”. The man is a full-fledged psychopath.
DaveP, goodpoint. I mean, the Moderate wing of the GOP sure did a great job with “Landslide” McCain, did they not?
What’s really striking to me is that this is the bargain MM, Kathleen Parker, and the other Mavericks want to extend to social conservatives:
1. Social conservatives shut up.
2. The Republican party abandons the “divisive” issues of the social right, like abortion, prayer, and defense of marriage.
3. Moderate Republicans get to ridicule, insult, and vilify the social right in order to suck up to Democrats and “independents.”
4. The social right is still expected to vote for Republicans.
Although I’m not formally a social conservative, I can understand why the proposed bargain is not very appealing to them.
I mean, the Moderate wing of the GOP sure did a great job with “Landslide†McCain, did they not?
Right on. They picked a candidate who agrees with Democrats on everything and bashes social conservatives just like they want.
Worked out beautifully, didn’t it?
If they choose that ugly, horrible “man” for Senate I’m referring to the whole state as “St. Olaf” for all of his misbegotten political career.
#24 – Of course, you know that St. Olav (of “The Golden Girls”) was founded by the descendants of the same brother and sister, right?
“And yet another piece of the puzzle falls into place.”
Regards,
Peter H.