Like any other vote margin in either direction wouldn’t be equally artificial.

Like elections, any elections, aren’t equally artificial.

Man-made, y’know. Not occurring because of the inhuman laws of nature.

Your link to RFFM is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen — I’d say “read between the lines”, except the author has clearly written his point in red ink in the margins. That’s not a call for electoral fairness; that’s a blatant argument that Pawlenty should intentionally subvert the system for party loyalty’s sake. The author tries to whitewash it here and there, but frankly he’s a terrible liar.

Are not there two other games of interest ?
The first game is, will Pawlenty NOT certify Franken while the Coleman court challenges are in process? If he does, he would be thumbing his nose at the 58% of voters who did not want Coleman to return to the Senate. Creditability would be questioned as he would be telling Minnesotans that the Republican partisan interests trump the need to have to TWO Senators representing the State. Many reference have made to the Washington Governor recount between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi, but the most valid point is that the court challenges went forward while the recount results were accepted by state officials. If the legislature had not certified the results as the Republicans wanted, Washington would not have had an official governor for six months since the court challenges took that long before they were exhausted. Pawlenty should not deprive the voters having full representation in the Senate ? (IF he is going to do it, then he should announce it today, so that IF Coleman wins then it would not be a partisan action when Pawlenty refused to certify while Franken files his lawsuit.) Conversely, Pawlenty is being challenged by Republican bloggers for not doing enough. Threatening If he lets Coleman go down to defeat, Pawlenty should forget about a future in national politics and remain that big fish in a small pond.

The second game is being played by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and the Republicans in the Senate denying Franken from taking office.
At the start of the last Congress, Speaker Pelosi was under pressure not to seat Vern Buchanan, (R-FL-13) who was certified as the winner by 369 votes over Democrat Christine Jennings. Jennings filed suit challenging the results based on the 18,000 people who went to the polls but had no vote registered in the congressional race. The 13 percent undervote was substantially higher than in surrounding counties, which registered undervotes of less than 5 percent. It was June (once again, six months after the start of the session) that her final appeal was adjudicated. Pelosi accepted Buchanan results, but Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was concerned that this could be repeated in future elections that she asked the Government Accountability Office and NIST to review the procedures involved with voting machines. She addressed these issues in S 1487 but it died in committee.
I presume that Cornyn knows the Buchanan situation and the time required in the WA Governor court battles yet he said That process is ongoing and will not be resolved, in all likelihood, for weeks and maybe longer. Ah, so to Cornyn, who cares how long Minnesota goes without full representation.

BTW, Congratulations on your Weblog Award nomination.

Though that might have resolved the Coleman-Franken impasse nicely.

Hey! Why not appoint Norm as the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia? Or Yugoslavia? Or Zaire?

Or put him in charge of monitoring events along the Iraq/Pakistan border?

I’m sure McCain would have thought of that….