In his bid to Take The Senate No Matter What, Norm Coleman has been trying to get a very large number of previously rejected absentee ballots counted. Most of these ballots were not counted because they were truly borked. Folks, remember this: If you are going to vote absentee, keep in mind the fact that an envelope with a vote in it showing up at city hall is looked at only as a possible vote. It would be so easy to produce fraudulent votes (and goodness knows there are enough Republicans around to carry out such nefarious acts) that the rules have to be pretty strict. My recommendation is to just go and vote on voting day if you can.
Anyway, Coleman wanted a very large number of absentee ballots, which had been previously rejected, to be counted not because they should not have been rejected, and not because there was really any chance of these votes changing the outcome of the election already won by Coleman’s worthy opponent, Al Franken.
He wanted these counted for two reasons. One: If you recount enough ballots, maybe, just maybe, random chance will cause a different outcome than we have now. Two: The longer it takes to certify Franken as the winner, the longer the Democrats of Our Fine State are not represented by both of the duly elected Democratic senators.
Gee, thanks, Norm.
Anyway, the court that is currently hearing Coleman’s election challenge has rejected most of categories of absentee ballots that Coleman is arguing to be counted.
From the Minnesota Progressive Project:
The latest news from the MN election contest, in which former Sen. Norm Coleman is hoping to keep Al Franken from becoming our next Senator, is that Norm’s chances just got cut in half. The 3-judge panel ruled that they will not consider 13 categories of rejected ballots (The judges had previously asked that the contestants argue why or why not to consider ballots in 19 separate categories). They ruled that ballots in these 13 categories were legally rejected and Norm’s legal team wouldn’t be able to present ballots in these categories for consideration.
Noah Kunin of The Uptake speculated on AM950’s On The Uptake show that this could halve the universe of 4600 or so ballots that are still in contention. I would add that it could possibly be fewer than 2000 … we won’t know until guys like Noah get a chance to analyze things.
Read the rest here. Also, have a look at this: Minnesota Court Rules Election Process as Sound
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When will this farce end? Let’s face it, Republicans like Norm Coleman are evolved from Jellyfish.
What a waste. If they would just hand Franken a temporary seat, Norm would just go away.
Not later than December 2014.
Oh, D. C., do you promise?
Interesting caveat. How do the election boards treat absentee ballots that are dropped off at the polling place on voting day, complete with voter ID verification and going straight into a ballot box?