01/03/2009 08:47:56 PM EST
Franken Wins Senate Election by 225 Votes!
posted by rbruck
In one of the most careful and transparent election recounts in history, Al Franken ended the recount with 225 votes more than Norm Coleman out of nearly 3 million votes cast. Today in Saint Paul, Minnesota's Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, was on hand as his department counted the last of the ballots for the recount. These 953 ballots were absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected during the initial tally on November 4. Out of those 954 ballots, 176 more voters chose Franken than Coleman, a margin for Franken over Coleman of nearly 20%.
There are still a few loose ends to tie up. At 5 pm on Christmas Eve, the Coleman campaign petitioned to the Minnesota Supreme Court asking to stop identifying wrongly rejected absentee ballots, and to change the procedure under which those ballots were identified. But since these ballots have now been identified, opened and counted using a <somewhat flawed> procedure dictated by the Supreme Court, and since the Supreme Court has not even agreed to hear arguments on the petition, it is not likely that the Supreme Court is leaning toward agreeing with Coleman's petition.
What happens next is that Ritchie assembles the Minnesota State Canvassing Board on Monday, where they will review all of the results and certify the vote count. Under Minnesota Law, the campaigns have seven days to file a legal challenge against the election results before the new Senator is certified. The Coleman attorneys have always maintained that they intend to file lawsuits challenging the results if Coleman loses. They have brought up a few issues during the recount that they will try to assert in their challenges. One potential issue for them is an envelope of ballots from one precinct that was lost and not available for the recount. Since not all ballots were available to recount, the Board agreed to use the original count from election night for that precinct. Another issue from the Coleman campaign is that they are claiming that there could have been 110 ballots that were counted twice. They already brought a lawsuit to the Supreme Court about this issue and lost. If they can produce evidence that ballots were double-counted, they would have the opportunity to present that evidence in an election contest. The final issue is that the Coleman campaign identified 654 absentee ballots that were rejected that they believe should not have been rejected. Coincidentally, these 654 ballots are all from heavily Republican precincts. The precinct judges, however, ruled twice now that these absentee ballots cannot be legally counted under Minnesota law. While none of these challenges are likely to succeed, at least to the extent of reversing a 225 vote lead for Franken, it gives the Coleman campaign grounds to pursue further legal action.
In other similar cases where there was a clear winner of the vote count but there were legal challenges, the Senate has chosen to seat the candidate certified to have the most votes. In this case, Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas has vowed to filibuster any attempt to seat Franken while the legal challenges are pending. We will now see if Al Franken has the 2 or 3 Republican friends in the Senate that he will need to override that filibuster.
If Franken is able to be seated in the Senate, it is unlikely that Coleman will choose to pursue a legal challenge to the election. Many donors would contribute to Coleman's legal fund in order to delay seating Franken, but with Franken seated the only motivation for donors would be the legal merits of those challenges and the chances that the results would change the outcome of the election. The chance of that happening is small. Furthermore, with Coleman under investigation by the FBI for taking bribes, he will want whatever funds he can muster for his own criminal defense.
Today was a good day for Minnesota and the US. I hope Franken likes being a Senator, because we are lucky to have him working for us.
