Al Franken

Senator Franken

My only comment on this sad event is had the GOP national braintrust followed this sort of advice. It would not have happened

Sarah Palin barnstormed across Iowa in the closing days of the 2008 election. Accomplished a lot, didn't it.

Get back to me when the GOP leadership attains a modicum of competence, please.

Democratic stategy for seating Franken clarifies, as does their dilemma

Everything in Congress hangs on 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, the Democrats have 57 Senators plus Joe Lieberman. They could get one more if the Minnesota recount in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is decided in their favor. It is beginning to appear that the Democrats are settling on a strategy of attempting to seat Franken after the state courts decide, regardless of where the underlying issues stand.

For example, check out this quote from Chuck Schumer in The Hill:

"We believe the law of Minnesota requires a candidate to be certified after all the state appeals are through, whether someone applies to the federal court or not," said Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

While Republicans are talking about this going to the Supreme Court, Democrats are playing that down. On Friday, Richard Hasen, who normally writes the excellent and critical Election Law Blog, argued at the blog of the American Constitution Society that SCOTUS wouldn't be likely to take the case. At dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of Democratic staffers and operatives, they all sang from this playbook.

This strategy seems calculated to avoid the hard question in this case.

Ben Ginsburg, Coleman's attorney, asks this question at Redstate

:

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

If the Democrats move forward on trying to seat Franken before the whole process winds down, they will be, in essence, short-circuiting the judgement of the court with "yes" answers to all these questions. Ultimately, the fundamental question that Democratic Senators will be voting that votes don't have to be treated the same everywhere.

They will be asserting that these kinds of facts should have no impact:

These voters remain disenfranchised because the Court changed the rules of the game on Friday, February 13th – long after the Election Day votes had been counted. Two and a half weeks into the trial and again yesterday, the court announced it would apply a “strict compliance” standard to judging the 11,000 unopened absentee ballots. That stands in contrast to the evidence at trial which showed that on Election Day, Minnesota’s counties and cities permitted ballots that “substantially complied” with the state’s laws to be counted. Altering the Election Day standard meant that thousands of ballots that would have been allowed on Election Day in most counties are now disallowed by the contest court.

 

ARE MINNESOTANS GETTING A LUMP OF COAL FOR CHRISTMAS?

As many call a truce in political negativity for the Christmas holiday, some politicians and political wannabes wont be focusing on Santa or practicing any piety over the birth of Christ.

No,……. I am not talking about atheists.

Whatever they believe or do not believe is their business, not mine, and as long as they do not try to stifle my celebration of the holiday, their not celebrating it doesn’t bother me.

grinch animated Pictures, Images and Photos

That is their business, not mine.

I am referring to a group of organized political mobsters who unlike Santa are not stuffing any gifts in any stockings or under Christmas trees. No, these organized criminals are stuffing ballots and playing the role of the Grinch.

Up north, in cold and snowy Minnesota, almost seven weeks after Election Day, Minnesotans are still counting ballots.

Folks in Minnesota are not especially slow or particularly uneducated. They know how to count. Its just that every time Board of Election officials finish counting a district or town, Democrats supporting ultra, leftwing, liberal, lunatic, comedian Al Franken for the United States Senate, keep finding more ballots that election officials seem to have missed. They either misplaced them, or forgot to bring them in the counting room, or just plain didn’t count some machines.

The sudden appearance of this continuous stream of ballots out of nowhere is hindering the process. It’s understandable. I mean after all, once you think you finished tallying up the votes in one district and find out that incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman won it by 115 votes, you would assume that it was over in that district.

No not in Minnesota.

In Minnesota just as one district is done and they move on to the next, new ballots from the town that they just completed pop up, out of nowhere. Even more surprising is the fact that all of the votes that mysteriously appear happen to be for Al Franken and it just so happens that the number of newly found Franken votes is just slightly more than the plurality of votes that Coleman previously won by.

Hmmm……that is really funny, you might even say miraculous. I mean it makes you kind of expect a burning bush to appear and communicate the final vote, which Al Franken will no doubt win.

But day after day, these miracle ballots appear. Most of them, if not all of them are found by Democrat officials. In one case 100 votes on one voting booth in a heavily Democrat town were discovered. All of the 100 votes were for Al Franken and even more odd was the fact that the time stamp on each of the 100 votes read November 2nd, 2008.

Election Day was November 4th, 2008.

Whoa,…….. now hold on here. Now its getting spooky.

I mean this is almost as miraculous as the Virgin Mary giving birth.

Maybe this guy Franken really is special. Maybe he is the “chosen one” who will walk on water, split the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and transform mankind.

Al Franken

Or maybe this guy Franken is simply as freakish as Frankenstein.

The circumstances surrounding the astonishing finding of votes, that are all for him, is funny. Much more funny than any of Franken’s offbeat humor and comedic routines.

I can’t wait for Saturday Night Live to do a segment on this situation.

That could be a truly hysterical skit. I could just see SNL cast members portraying blind election board officials counting ballots as liberal Democrat operatives keep passing them the same ballot over and over again and declaring it for Al Franken each time.

SNL scriptwriters could have a field day writing that segment. It would really be funny. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is not funny. It is sad. Sad but true.

Liberal Democrat operatives are stuffing ballots. They are counting illegitimate votes for Al Franken that they would never consider to be legitimate for Norm Coleman if the circumstances were reversed.

But true to form, liberal hypocrisy abounds. Hypocrisy reigns supreme in liberal la la land. These are the people who try to combat discrimination by implementing forms of discrimination.

They are the people who want everyone to pay their fair share, but refuse to pay it themselves.

They sit in private jets writing press releases that denounce some for speeding up global warming by driving an S.U.V. without thinking twice about how much more damaging their flight is than any S.U.V..

Liberalism is rooted in hypocrisy. So it should not surprise anyone to know that Democrats accept a lower standard for themselves than they do for Republicans. Just like Florida in the election fiasco of 2000 when Democrats wanted a higher standard for approving vote counts in some districts than in others. In 2000 they wanted higher standards in counties that Bush won and lower standards in counties that Gore won.

Then they decided that they didn’t want all disputed votes reevaluated and recounted, only some votes.

Let’s face it folks. Democrats are now in control. Total control. From the White House to the U.S house and the senate.

Minnesota Republican Senator Norm ColemanIf Coleman wins this thing it will really be a miracle.

The way I see it, even if Minnesota’s liberal Democrat Secretary of State certifies Norm Coleman as the winner, the Democrat led Senate may refuse to seat him. Under senate rules, that is something they can do. It happened as recently as 1974 when in New Hampshire a Republican won a close election and despite certification of that victory, by the state of New Hampshire, the U.S. Senate called for a new election.

Democrats in the House of Representatives did the same thing with a close election in Indiana. Here again the Republican won. The state certified the Republican winner but Democrats refused to seat him. They ordered a recount and the Republican won again but by an even larger margin than before. Democrats still refused to seat the Republican winner. House democrats conducted their own recount, with their own standards and declared the losing democrat, the winner.

This stuff didn’t happen in the “old days”. It happened during the most recent past decades. And liberals haven’t changed very much in that time. If anything their hypocrisy has increased over time.

So it doesn’t look good for Norm Coleman.

Even if a preponderance of legitimate votes for him overcomes a preponderance of illegitimate ballots for Franken, liberal senate leader Harry Reid and his henchmen will probably ignore it and refuse to seat Coleman.

Senate Leader Harry Reid

It may not get that far anyway. Minnesota liberals are pretty ruthless. They will probably spend Christmas falsifying any piece of paper that isn’t wrapped around a Christmas gift and submit it to blind Board of Election officials who will count it as a vote for Al Franken.

You have to remember that these are the liberal Democrats who, six years ago, did everything they could to prevent Norm Coleman from winning the first time he ran for the Minnesota senate seat.

Back then he was running against incumbent, liberal, firebrand, Paul Wellstone.

Deceased Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone

As popular as Wellstone was, the race between him and Coleman was tightening up. Then suddenly in a truly horrific and tragically sad turn of events, while campaigning, the plane carrying Wellstone, one of his sons and a campaign worker crashed and killed them along with the pilot of the plane.

As tragic as it was, Minnesota Democrats pulled out another corpse, Jimmy Carter’s vice stooge and a former landslide-losing, Democrat nominee for President in his own right, Walter Mondale. They asked him to fill the vacancy and become the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Wellstone’s place. He accepted and Democrats held a nationally televised memorial service for the senator.

As sad as the the occasion was, with the body of Senator Wellstone, his son and campaign associate still warm, Minnesota liberals launched Walter Mondale’s campaign to replace Wellstone in a spectacle as raucous and celebratory as the Democrat’s national convention.

Filled with music and cheerleading speeches, the event only lacked the traditional balloon drop.

Walter Mondale

The blatant disrespect for Senator Wellstone and the astonishing exploitation of his death actually ended up hurting more than it helped. Even non-activist, left leaning, Minnesota voters were appalled by the political spectacle.

It wound up making history. Up till then, Walter Mondale never lost a statewide election in Minnesota. In fact even when Mondale embarrassed himself and Democrats in his landslide loss for President against Ronald Reagan, Minnesota was the only state in the union to still vote for Mondale.

Well after turning the somber funeral of a sitting senator into a boisterous campaign rally, even Minnesota rejected Walter Mondale.

Liberals in Minnesota are still feeling the sting of that debacle. Walter Mondale won’t even show his face anymore and others are still bitter. That is why you can bank on their not spending this Christmas celebrating. They will spend it stealing. Stealing an election that they were not able to steal six years ago.

This Christmas, Minnesota Democrats have no visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, they have visions of ballots falling from the heavens. Ballots that are all marked in support of Al Franken.

So tonight, don’t be surprised if Santa is a little late to your house. Democrats will be forcing him to stuff ballots instead of stockings at Minnesota’s State Board of Elections headquarters.

If they are successful, all that the voters of Minnesota will find in their carefully hung stockings tomorrow morning will be a couple of lumps of coal.

punchline-politics21

Just before Christmas, there was an honest politician, a kind lawyer and Santa Claus traveling in the elevator of a very posh hotel.

Just before the doors opened they all noticed a five dollar bill on the floor.

Which one picked it up??

Santa of course, the other two don't exist!

 

No More Minnesotas

I don't think we can say that things are over yet in Minnesota, but we could be inching closer to another confirmation of the GOP's rock bottom status. If Al Franken is elected a Senator, I think we can officially say that things can't possibly get any worse.

What are the broader lessons here? One of the big problems it seems we face is that we keep losing votes after Election Day. On the day after the election, Obama's Presidential margin stood at under 6 points. Now, it's 7.3 according to RealClearPolitics. A lot of this is West Coast absentees and provisionals. But the reality is that it's going to be very, very difficult to succeed in recounts if we tolerate 1 to 1.5 points of slippage in overall vote counts after Election Day, usually in their direction. And MN-SEN isn't even the worst. Remember when we suddenly lost OH-15 by more than 2,000 votes when they decided to count 26,000 Franklin County provisionals a month after the election? And I don't even need to remind you about WA-GOV in 2004, when a governor was elected courtesy of votes found in closets.

Even if some of these votes are counted legitimately (the Ohio provisions example), we are inviting a crisis of confidence in our election system if it looks like the winner is dependent on the time we count ballots: usually a Republican on the day of the election when standard procedures are followed, and then a Democrat after protracted recounts and court battles.

We must insist on basic good government reforms to increase confidence in election results. Some of these might be done federally (as amendments to HAVA) and others will need to go state by state.

  • Full electronic voting with a paper trail audit. There's a reason Paul Carmouche didn't challenge a 356-vote margin in LA-4: because the voting was 100% electronic. Critics have made good points about the lack of a paper trail on many of these machines. But MN-SEN shows that optical scan ballots, preferable only to hanging chads, are not fulproof. While plenty of bugs have been demonstrated on e-voting machines, there's no evidence (to date) of actual votes being mis-counted or lost -- and a paper trail should greatly improve the detection and resolution of these issues in real time.
  • All ballots counted within 72 hours. It shouldn't take weeks to count absentees and provisionals. Let's set a reasonable window for counting every vote -- like 72 or 96 hours -- understanding that this might be different in states that are largely vote-by-mail.
  • Zero tolerance for lost-and-found votes. Negligence in handling voted ballots should be made a misdemeanor offense at a minimum. Election officials should pay heavy fines and face removal for incidents like the 133 "lost" Minneapolis ballots. Heavy legal penalties should be a deterrent to "losing" ballots that are then "found" at conveninent points in a recount. 
  • An open election results standard. I want this for other reasons, but a bunch of tech people should get together to formulate a standard for the reporting of real-time precinct election results in XML that also covers 1) reporting status of absentees and provisionals, and 2) historical precinct data, including notional numbers from census block counts for re-precincted areas. For all precincts, we should know how many voters are registered to get a real sense of voter turnout as well as how many people voted in this precinct in the last few elections. Practically, this means that the spotting of anomalies can be crowdsourced to the online community. If turnout seems abnormally high or low for a precinct, we can know in real time.

The GOP, with the help of sites like Election Journal, has made it a priority to detect and prevent voter fraud before and during elections -- but we lack a similarly systematic approach to prevent the stealing of elections after the fact. (Arguably, such a strategy would have more of an impact.) More than a handful of races this year were in recounts or in limbo until after Election Day, and at the Senate level, all have been decided for the Democrat or are trending that way (Alaska, Oregon, and now possibly Minnesota).

Will Ventura & Franken Split the Clown Vote?

Jesse Ventura's NPR interview sparked huge wave of speculation about his entry into the marquee Coleman-Franken Minnesota Senate race over the last few days and although he backtracked slightly this morning, it was a fairly weak denial.

So which candidate does he hurt?  So far a pair of polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA are the only numbers I’ve seen testing Ventura’s potential entry.  Neither of these polls are particularly reliable sources, but broadly they show Ventura as either helping Coleman or not making much of a difference.

My gut on it is that after his tenure as governor Ventura is very well know – meaning that the early poll numbers are broadly accurate.  The Body's stated rational for running is opposition to the Iraq War which moves him to the left while his "crazy S.O.B." appeal would siphon angry/change/anti-system votes away from Franken.  All of that bodes well for Coleman.

Anyone know Minnesota politics and have an on the ground read on which candidate Ventura will help or any good rumors about him being in or out? 

 

Show Me State Leans McCain

My electoral map had 3 toss-up states on it, now it has 2. John McCain has led the last three polls in that state by an average margin of 5 points. Missouri is a swing and it will go back and forth. For now though, I'm going to put this one into the leaning McCain column. Below is my new map with leaners.

This leaves Obama up 252-249 with 37 electoral votesd undecided. Yes, for the first time in 208 years, a tie is definitely possible.

Body Slammed

What difference could the potential entrance of Former Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura into the U.S. Senate race make to the re-election chances of Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN.)? A massive one.

Unlike other Third Party Candidates, Ventura would enter with plenty of name recognition from his time as Governor. In a year of low Congressional Approval ratings, one can't discount the possibility of "The Body" going to the U.S. Senate. Coleman's approval ratings are hovering around 50%. A lot of people would like a change, but the clownish Al Franken isn't the solution. It's a sad situation that Minnesota Democrats have put themselves into. Jesse Ventura would be a more credible choice for Minnesota voters than Al Franken.

For Conservatives, the choice is clear. Coleman's pro-life, Ventura's pro-abortion and disdainful of religion. Ventura can't be counted on for judges, is sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement, and has a somewhat unpredictable and inconsistent ideological vain. However, this may be one bridge we don't have to cross as it's not certain that Ventura will run. We'll have to see what impact he has, when and if he does announce.

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