Minnesota: Franken v. Absentee Ballots

Opinion Journal
APRIL 18, 2009


Minnesota's Missing Votes
Some Senate absentee ballots are more equal than others.


Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.

Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.

The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.

Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.

Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.

During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.

But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.

If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.

This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.

Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.

Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.








Franken

Minnesota: What an embarassment.

Dear Minnesotans:

I am sure that by now you have read and been told how proud you should be that the system works - that every ballot is being counted, that the process works.

I am sorry - whoever has been telling you this nonsense should be fired.

It is over a month and a half and you are still finding ballots.

It is a disgrace that any ballots were not counted (that should have been) in the first day - let alone nearly two months later.

You are an embarrassment, right up there with the idiots in Florida who can't vote.

If we were to return Minnesota to the Sioux and Florida to the Seminole, our country would be better off.





Number of uncounted ballots in Minn. still unclear

By BRIAN BAKST, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 29, 6:07 pm ET


ST. PAUL, Minn. – The campaigns of Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken wrangled Monday over hundreds of unopened absentee ballots that could still tip Minnesota's Senate race.

Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the secretary of state's office without agreement on which ballots to open or how many should be under consideration.

That leaves the heavy lifting to a series of regional meetings that begin Tuesday. The ballots that make the cut at those meetings will be opened in St. Paul by Monday.

Those ballots are important because Franken leads Coleman by just 47 votes after the manual review of more than 2.9 million ballots.

The absentee ballots in question were incorrectly rejected by poll judges on or before Election Day, mostly because of clerical errors outside the four legal reasons for rejection.

The state board overseeing the recount ordered that the ballots be counted, and the state Supreme Court agreed — although justices added a few wrinkles. A majority ruled that either campaign can keep any ballot out of the mix with a written objection, leaving spurned voters the option of going to court to reinstate their ballot.

Local officials identified some 1,350 rejected ballots they now say should count, but Coleman's campaign suggested there are an additional 650 that should be added.

A large share of the ballots already identified come from counties where Franken ran up big margins over Coleman. Minneapolis alone accounts for almost 10 percent of the ballots.

Coleman's proposed additions skew heavily toward suburban and rural counties where he did best in the election.

By this weekend, the secretary of state's office is supposed to open the pile of ballots and add the votes to the race tally. It's the last major obstacle before the five-member Canvassing Board declares a winner.

Monday's negotiations were an attempt to speed the absentee counting process, which the court said must end by Jan. 4.

In seeking to reconsider more ballots than previously identified, Coleman campaign attorney Tony Trimble stressed the stakes.

"Time is precious, but accuracy is much more precious," he said.

Franken attorney Kevin Hamilton accused the Coleman team of trying to manipulate the process for political advantage.

"If we're going to start cherry-picking off those lists, the whole thing breaks down," Hamilton said.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, who ran the negotiations, said he was reluctant to ask county officials to re-examine absentee ballots they had sorted through twice already.

"The clock is ticking away," he said at one point.

At the regional meetings, local election officials will display the sealed envelopes of the list of potentially erroneous rejections.

If both campaigns agree the ballot inside should count, it is shipped to St. Paul. A disagreement leaves it out pending possible court action. The campaign lawyers were warned they could face sanctions for baseless attempts to exclude legal votes.





election

Al Franken - The Jokes on him

What is a joker doing running for the US Senate in Minnesota? It is a state that has some very odd views if their elected officials are any indication (Jesse Ventura). A state comprised until the 1990s of German/Dutch laborers who raised families and worked hard to move up socio-economically - it is still quite odd that a joker like Franken could be considered a possible Senator from the Democratic party.

Looking at the demographics, Republicans would be the odd man out, but still - Franken? You would think that people in Minnesota would have tired of the odd.

Franken, who attempts to malign Norm Coleman every chance he gets - connections to Bush, Cheney, lies someone told at some time, his support for the war in Iraq, his ties to Haliburton, his support for big oil, his voting for the destruction of the planet, and Satan ... all part of the attack pattern. You can't trust Coleman because of: [insert one of the above].

It's easy using the bogeymen of the left: Bush, Cheney, Haliburton, Iraq, lies, oil. Throw them at someone and watch them duck, but what if they have no connection to anything in particular, how should Coleman respond? Pretty much how he does respond, but the lack of an answer only fuels Franken's attack and becomes proof he is in bed with evil.

I love the methodology. So 1950s. In fact, it was during the Cold War that the Supreme Court, in a decision on communist spies/sympathizers said something to the effect that - the fact there is no evidence IS EVIDENCE that there is a conspiracy. However much Franken would like to distance himself from that method of attack, for it was the liberal base that argued, rightly at times, that the logic was deeply mistaken - HE IS USING THE SAME ATTACK against Coleman.

Yet, confront Franken about issues: his failure to pay worker's compensation or carry worker's compensation insurance, and then ignore the twelve letters sent to him regarding a $25,000 fine .... Franken failed to answer.

Franken responds to that issue by saying he had moved from New York and had not known about the letters. Here is a hint at the truth: Find out how many people had control over the letters: Al, his wife, and two assistants. 4 people and two were married to each other. Does his wife not speak to him about $25,000 fines? Is that something so insignificant an amount that they routinely ignore requests to pay? That is what they expect people in Minnesota to believe. OR another theory Franken offers - the two assistants took the mail and destroyed all twelve letters, while his wife was off getting her nails done or doing something more important!! That is exactly the way businesses all work - an assistant controls the business and the owner/proprietor knows nothing about the issue.

Doesn't work this way unless they are so incompetent as to have no control of their money or property. He is passing the buck and ignoring responsibility YET he wants the people of Minnesota to send him to Washington to play with your money and take responsibility - two things he has shown he cannot do.

The people of Minnesota deserve better than Jesse Ventura and Al Franken. Norm Coleman may be a member of the retardican party, but he is not as irresponsible and hateful as Al Franken, and he will not pass the buck.