Election 2008

AlterNet's election coverage.

Democratic Senators: Franken Won't Be Seated with New Class
Posted by Sam Stein, Ryan Grim, Huffington Post on January 6, 2009 at 9:16 AM.

Fallout from the surreal political scandal in Illinois has now wafted into Minnesota.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is refusing to seat Roland Burris, appointed by disgraced Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, for lack of state certification. That's a problem for Al Franken, who also lacks final state certification despite the fact that the state canvassing board declared him the winner Monday.

Will Senate Democrats seat Franken without official certification? "I don't think so," said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois.

"Republicans will object to trying to seat him," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. Later in the day, Manley said that Democratic leadership would not seat Franken when the new class of Senators was sworn in on Tuesday. "Now that the bipartisan state canvassing board has certified Al Franken as the winner, we hope Senator Coleman respects its decision and does not drag this out for months with litigation... However, there will not be an effort to seat Mr. Franken tomorrow."

The remarks from Senate's top two Democrats cast a shadow on what was an otherwise bright day for Franken's political objectives. The comedian-turned-Senate aspirant claimed victory on Monday after the Minnesota canvassing board's final tallies showed him with a 1,212,431 to 1,212,206 vote victory.

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Update: Al Franken Declared Winner; Coleman's Options Dwindle
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on January 5, 2009 at 11:29 AM.

Update from Satyam over at Think Progress:

The Minnesota State Canvassing board has certified results showing that Al Franken has won the Minnesota Senate recount, beating Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) by 225 votes. But the race is still "in limbo," as the Board’s declaration "starts a seven-day clock for Coleman to file a lawsuit protesting the result" -- which he has indicated he will do. Senate Republicans have said they will filibuster any attempt to seat Franken while litigation is pending.

Original Post by Steve Benen:

It's going to be increasingly difficult for Norm Coleman and the Republican Party to justify dragging this out even further.

The Minnesota state Supreme Court has turned down Sen. Norm Coleman's plea to include 654 rejected absentee ballots in the final vote count in his race against entertainer Al Franken, a major setback for the GOP incumbent who is seeking to make up a 225-vote deficit.

The Court -- in an opinion issued this afternoon and signed by Chief Justice Alan Page ( a member of the Purple People Eaters) -- said that Coleman's attempt to include these rejected absentees did not meet the criteria for counting ballots laid out in a previous ruling, specifically that both sides had to agree for any additional ballots to be counted.

"Because the parties and the respective counties have not agreed as to any of these additional ballots, the merits of this dispute (and any other disputes with respect to absentee ballots) are the proper subject of an election contest," wrote Page.

And with that, Franken should be declared the winner in about an hour.

Lead Franken attorney Marc Elias released a statement in response to the court ruling, "Today, the Supreme Court once again affirmed the validity of the rules under which this recount was conducted. Minnesotans have waited a long time for a winner to be declared in this race, and today, with the last attempt to halt the counting process now having failed, Al Franken will be declared the winner."

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Franken Winning Vast Majority of Wrongly Rejected Absentee Ballots
Posted by tremayne, Open Left on January 3, 2009 at 5:53 PM.

Norm Coleman's lawyers tried to stop the counting of hundreds of wrongly rejected absentee ballots and now we know they had good reason: those ballots are breaking for Al Franken who is winning nearly 60 percent of them. With another 15 percent going to "other" that doesn't leave many for Coleman.

The Uptake has a live feed where the votes are now being counted and you can also check their live updated spreadsheet here. But as of right now:

Franken: 270

Coleman: 160

Other/No vote: 79

So to win, Coleman must get a court to throw out these newly counted ballots and then trim another 50 votes off Franken's total somehow. Good luck with that Norm.

Conservatives Preparing for Franken Victory
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 31, 2008 at 6:40 AM.

As the window closes on Norm Coleman's chances for retaining his seat in the Senate, some conservatives are beginning to envision life without the Minnesota Republican.

In a filing on the conservative website, NewsMax.com, author David A. Patten looked at the numbers and saw in them a Coleman-less Senate.

The counting of improperly rejected absentee ballots will probably increase Democratic challenger Al Franken's lead over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman according to a new analysis of voting trends, effectively relegating Coleman to filing lawsuits considered unlikely to reverse the outcome of the election.

Others on the right are not ready to accept defeat. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn released a statement on Tuesday indicating that some GOP senators would resist seating Franken before the courts have their say, even if the Democratic challenger is declared the winner of the recount. "I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election," Cornyn claimed.

In private, meanwhile, GOP officials have begun to contemplate Al Franken -- whose lead stands at a scant 50 votes and with largely favorable absentee ballots left to count -- ending up in Washington D.C.

By and large, such discussion has not surfaced in public. Coleman's hopes hinge on uncovering enough wrongfully rejected absentee ballots to overcome his current deficit but also the possibility of legally challenging the results.

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Coleman Threatens to Derail Recount, Secretary of State Expects Resolution
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 30, 2008 at 6:35 AM.

Entering the final stages of the Minnesota recount process, Sen. Norm Coleman has made some dramatic moves meant to improve his long-shot chances. In the process, the Republican Senator is threatening the conclusion of the election.

On Monday, the Minnesota Republican identified a scant 136 wrongfully rejected absentee ballots (out of 1,346) that he wanted to be counted in the final tally. In addition, Coleman proposed to add 700 contested absentee ballots for review (Al Franken proposed adding 85), suggesting that he is more interested in reclaiming the lead rather than operating in good faith. Since resolution of the absentee-ballot issue is dependent on both campaigns and local officials agreeing on which votes should be reconsidered, Coleman's actions threaten to derail the delicate path on which the recount process had set.

As the Associated Press reported on Monday, "Coleman's proposed additions skew heavily toward suburban and rural counties, where he did best in the election."

And yet, as suspicious as the moves seem on the surface, local officials kept a calm veneer. Reached by phone, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie tried to assuage concerns that Coleman's actions would endanger any short-term consensus on a Senate winner. Stating, simply, that he expected both campaigns to be "amenable" during this stage of the recount, Ritchie described the Coleman campaign's move on Monday as just another step in a meticulous process of declaring a final vote official.

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Campaign Round-Up: Franken To Be Seated? Blago Out By February? Jeb Will Run?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 29, 2008 at 10:17 AM.

MONDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

• In the wake of last week's Minnesota Supreme Court ruling, lawyers for Sen. Norm Coleman's, R-Minn., campaign are threatening a new lawsuit to prevent the state from certifying election results that would make Al Franken the winner.
• Could Franken be seated before his victory is certified? The state's other senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, is working on it.
• While the race for the RNC chairmanship heats up, committee members have called for an unprecedented special meeting, working outside the dictates of the national party's leadership.
• It looks like former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is moving closer to launching a Senate campaign.

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Potential Franken Victory Sends GOP into Paranoid Fits
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 25, 2008 at 12:19 PM.

The possible, perhaps, impending victory of Al Franken to the Senate has sent GOP officials into a paranoid tizzy.

In an "urgent message" to supporters, the Republican National Lawyer Association accuses Franken and his "liberal allies" of "working feverishingly [sic] to steal the Minnesota Senate election."

"As you may know, the precinct recount phase of the Minnesota Senate race was won by Sen. Norm Coleman on Election Day," reads the petition, signed by the group's executive director, Michael Thielen. "But Al Franken still won't concede. Instead, Franken raised millions of dollars from liberals in New York and Hollywood to fight a "legal" battle to undo the will of the voters. He even got the Minnesota Supreme Court to order canvassing boards to consider about 1600 previously rejected and questionable ballots. Now, Republican Norm Coleman has until December 31st to fight against Franken's liberal legal team to keep his Senate seat. RNLA and Norm Coleman are fighting for every vote -- literally!"

From there, the RNLA asks readers to donate money so that it can uphold the sanctity of the Minnesota election and prevent Franken from "stealing" the Senate seat.

For those following the recount closely, the letter is filled with a variety of obvious misinterpretations and inaccuracies. For instance, the RNLA gives the impression that during the canvassing process, officials "found errors favoring Franken so incredibly statistically improbable that statisticians are questioning the officials in these counties." It's not clear which statisticians the RNLA is referring to. But a study done by a Dartmouth professor actually predicted the very gains made by Franken.

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Fox News Spins History (Again)
Posted by David Sirota, Daily Kos on December 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

I appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss both the Blagojevich flap and the imminent economic recovery package from the Obama administration. You can watch the clip here. As you'll see, on that latter issue, Fox News is starting its campaign to stop Obama's big spending plan by stating - as assumed fact - that "historians pretty much agree" that Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression, and that therefore, Obama shouldn't try another New Deal.

When I say Fox News' assertion about historians is patently false, they literally laugh at me as if I've said something so clearly untrue, something Americans supposedly assume is so obviously stupid, that it's worthy of ridicule.

The Depression issue was brought up by conservative pundit Monica Crowley - not surprising since this is the conservative talking point du jour ever since the "center-right nation" meme started looking idiotic and ever since fringe-right-wing bloviator Amity Shlaes published her since-discredited book claiming FDR essentially created the Great Depression. Crowley supported her the "FDR ruined the country" meme with the very authoritative-sounding statement that "based on all kinds of studies and academic work done on the great depression" she knows that the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolonged the Great Depression."

Of course, she doesn't offer up a single study or "academic work" as any kind of proof, and yet, when I say her assertion is absurd, Fox News anchor Greg Jarrett starts laughing at me - as if my assertion that FDR's New Deal helped end the Great Depression is so fantastical as to prompt guffawing. Jarrett proceeds to state that historians "pretty much agree" that FDR prolonged the Great Depression, and resorts to insisting that he knows that's true because "it's in the books" - whatever the hell that means. Indeed, Fox wants us to believe that what was only very recently the deranged propaganda of a handful of conservative political pundits is now such a consensus opinion among historians that to say otherwise is to evoke laughter.

Now, it's true - back in 2004, two UCLA professors published a little-noticed report claiming the New Deal's government intervention prolonged the Great Depression. But that assertion has been subsequently eviscerated by, ya know, actual data.

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AP Shocker: Obama's a Geek!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 25, 2008 at 11:26 AM.

I suppose this is among the slowest news days on the calendar, but I was still surprised to see this profound bit of reporting gracing the front page real estate of the San Francisco Chronicle this AM:

President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign.

That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon.

Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd: The Story of My People."

"One imagines a terrifying rally of 'Star Trek' people shouting, 'One of us!'" Nugent said, in an interview conducted by e-mail, of course.

Others see only some geek qualities, qualifying the president-elect as merely "nerd-adjacent." After all, he's an athlete and kind of cool, some experts demur. Still, there's enough there for geeks to celebrate.

Psychology professor Larry Welkowitz of Keene State College in New Hampshire hopefully speculated that there's a shift in what's cool and that "smart can be in. Maybe that started with the computer programmers of the '90s."

Maybe you should shut up, nerd.

The AP helpfully offers a kind of taxonomy of spazzes for the unitinitiated:

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Senator Al Franken? It's Looking That Way ...
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 25, 2008 at 3:29 AM.

The Minnesota Supreme Court may have sealed Norm Coleman's fate yesterday.

In a unanimous decision handed down just now, the state Supremes denied Coleman any relief in a lawsuit he was waging to deal with allegations of double-counted absentee ballots, which his campaign says have given an illegitimate edge to Al Franken. The Coleman campaign was seeking to switch 25 selected precincts back to their Election Night totals, which would undo all of Franken's recount gains in those areas and put Coleman back in the lead.

The court, however, sided with the Franken camp's lawyers in saying that a question like this should be reserved for a post-recount election contest proceeding, as the proper forum to discover evidence -- and which also has a burden of proof that heavily favors the certified winner.

Simply put, Coleman is in very big trouble right now. With Al Franken leading by 47 votes, this lawsuit was Coleman's best shot at coming from behind. And it just failed, making a Franken win nearly a foregone conclusion when this recount finishes up in early January.

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Coleman and Franken Make a Deal
Posted by Rachel Weiner, Huffington Post on December 24, 2008 at 9:23 AM.

Minnesota Public Radio reports that Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken have struck a deal on disputed absentee ballots in their recount.

The plan they've submitted, which must be reviewed by the Minnesota Supreme Court, would count rejected absentees only if both sides agree they were wrongly cast aside.

The proposal draws out the process past the high court's end-of-the-year deadline. It could leave Minnesota without a decision on who won the race until after the new class of Senators is sworn in on Jan. 6.

Ritchie said concluding the work in time for the new session of Congress is not something he's at all concerned about.

"We've been really clear in saying our top priority is accuracy and transparency and the timing thing is just not our issue," [Secretary of State Mark] Ritchie said. "I want to put an underline, we don't care as long as it's accurate and we've done it in an accurate and transparent way. We don't care when it's done."

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Franken-Coleman Update: Coleman's Desperate Haily Marys
Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake on December 23, 2008 at 8:16 PM.

Another day, another set of Hail Mary efforts by the Coleman campaign.  They fared about as well as Norm's previous Hail Marys -- that is to say, not well at all.

First up was his bid to have 16 ballots that had been marked with an "X" pulled and reviewed by the state canvassing board, out of a stated concern that the ballots had either been assigned to the wrong candidate or not counted at all.  The 16 ballots soon became 40 ballots, which were all pulled and reviewed -- and no votes were changed as a result. 

Second up was his petition to the Minnesota Supreme Court to get rid of what he claimed were "duplicate ballots" in the city of Minneapolis.  As mentioned yesterday, the Hennepin County Canvassing Board itself filed a motion with the Soops  The Supremes didn't rule on it yet -- they probably won't until tomorrow, per The UpTake's Mike McIntee in his video recap -- but judging from their comments as Twittered by The UpTake, they didn't seem to be too friendly towards Coleman's arguments.

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Al Franken Projected to Win Minnesota's Senate Seat
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 18, 2008 at 5:02 PM.

Democratic challenger Al Franken finds himself on the cusp of winning a seat in the United States Senate after Minnesota's canvassing board awarded him a host of challenged votes during deliberations on Thursday.

As of 8PM ET, the Minneapolis Star Tribune projected that Franken would finish the recount process with a lead of 89 votes, positioning him to become the 59th Democratic senator in the upcoming Congress.

According to local paper tallies, Franken currently trails Sen. Norm Coleman by a mere five votes, down from the 358-vote margin that the Republican held just last night. The Associated Press had the count even closer, with Coleman ahead by two votes.

The gains came as the canvassing board sifted through hundreds of ballots that Coleman had contested during the recount process. On Friday, the canvassing board will consider another 400 or so Coleman challenges. If the pattern remains consistent, Franken should vault past his opponent to a projected lead of approximately 89 votes, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The process by which the Senate race has come to this stage is often confusing. Coleman held an approximately 200-vote lead after the state went through a hand recount of all ballots. However, there remained approximately 1,500 ballots that one or the other campaign contested (and temporarily removed from the overall vote tally). Coleman challenged about 1,000 of these, Franken the rest.

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Minnesota Update: Lawyers Duke it Out in Franken-Coleman Recount
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 18, 2008 at 7:33 AM.

The Mess in Minnesota just keeps getting stranger.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman went before the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to block improperly rejected absentee ballots from Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, with his lawyer warning that justices must act to prevent a repeat of the tortured 2000 Bush-Gore impasse.

"With the best of intentions, this could become Florida 2008," attorney Roger Magnuson told the court, saying it would be improper to add votes not counted on Election Day.

The argument drew stern words from Justice Paul Anderson.

"This is not Florida," Anderson said. "I don't appreciate the comparison."

I can't say I blame him. But keep in mind, Coleman's lawyers aren't using the Fiasco in Florida from eight years ago as a disaster to avoid, they're using it as a template for their current arguments. As Kevin explained last night, Coleman hopes to stop vote counting "by using Bush v. Gore as precedent for an Equal Protection Clause claim," the same Bush v. Gore decision "that was so contrary to previous conservative opinion that the court specifically (and to considerable mockery) stated that 'Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances.'"

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Franken-Coleman Update: FBI Investigating Coleman? Race Decided By Friday?
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 10, 2008 at 8:18 AM.

The Minnesota Senate recount election will make a giant step towards a conclusion on Friday, when the state's canvassing board meets to determine the fate of improperly dismissed absentee ballots.

On Tuesday, Al Franken's chief counsel traveled to Washington D.C. to brief reporters on the current status of the election. He deliberately did not close the window on legal action if unlawfully rejected absentee voters were not counted.

"We purposely made a point not to appeal. We wanted to let this canvassing board have an opportunity to figure out where it wanted to go with these uncounted absentee ballots... we will await the hearing on Friday," said Mark Elias. But "if voters in Minnesota are disenfranchised, all options will be on the table. We will not walk away from hundreds, if not thousands votes that did not get counted because of administrative errors."

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