It now seems that Al Franken will be declared the winner of the Minnesota Senate seat. This is a great steal for the Democrats, but don’t expect Coleman to go easy into the good night.
But after the announcement, there will be a seven-day waiting period before an election certificate is completed. If any lawsuits are filed during that waiting period, certification is conditional until the issue is settled in court.
Coleman, who led Franken on election night, hasn’t ruled out a lawsuit challenging the results, claiming there were irregularities that gave Franken an unfair advantage.
The Coleman campaign also has a petition pending before the state Supreme Court to include 650 ballots that it says were improperly rejected but not forwarded by local officials to St. Paul for counting.
Hopefully he has enough fortitude to fight this robbery, which is exactly what is happening.
In 2004, the Washington state governor’s race was stolen by the Democrats. For those who have forgotten, Red County helps us remember:
To recap–six days after the 2004 election, Rossi was ahead by almost 3500 votes. Then, King County “miraculously” found 10,000 votes! Rossi still pulled out that recount by 42 votes, but Gregoire’s team, lead by Berendt, still demanded another count. “Gracious concession” is not in her vocabulary, for she who must win at all costs.
We know how the third count ended, but what has been glossed over are certain facts like the liberal activist group, ACORN’s later conviction for submitting several thousand fraudulent voter registrations. U.S. News and World Report writer, Michael Barone found on investigation that 2,000 more King County absentee ballots had been cast than were ever requested. After Gregoire was inaugurated a survey found that nearly a third of democrats actually believed that Rossi won the election.
So what does that have to do with Minnesota? The guy who was “Governor” Gregiore’s advisor in her theft, Paul Berendt, is also aboard the Franken hijacking.
It is following the same path as in Washington. Lose the first count, get a recount, mysteriously find ballots, recount, lose again, find more and more ballots, eventually win. TA-DA!
Franken started the recount process with a 215 vote deficit, but now leads by 225 votes. How did that happen?
The Opinion Journal has details:
- Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as “duplicate” and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.
- In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken’s campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had “lost” 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge — officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night — the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.
- Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he’s benefited both ways from the board’s inconsistency.
- And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie’s office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken’s edge by a further 176 votes.
Despite all this, the Canvassing Board is ready to certify Franken the winner. How is that not outright robbery? Votes are “found” in the back seats of cars and in warehouses and just happen to benefit Franken more than Coleman. And we are supposed to believe they are valid.
The Democrats are already calling on Coleman to concede. Harry Reid, honest as the day is long, says “After all, early on Senator Coleman criticized Al Franken for wanting a recount and wasting taxpayer money. I would hope now that it is clear he lost, that Senator Coleman follow his own advice and not subject the people of Minnesota to a costly legal battle.”
Folks, that is right out of Saul Alinsky’s handbook:
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
This is a heist. There is no other way to look at it.
Will the Republicans fight against this with the will to win, or will they talk a good talk, then fold? They need to take a stand right here.
I lack confidence that Mitch McConnell has that kind of fight in him. Perhaps there are some other Senators willing to make a stand.
Related posts:
