Franken/Coleman Update

(update below): The legal proceedings continue in Minnesota. A few days ago Michael Stokes Paulson writing in (what else could it be) the Wall Street Journal makes the argument that the recount in Minnesota, due to the irregularities, was unconstitutional and therefore there should be a re-vote.

In the process Paulson rehashes much of  the same old nonsense that has been definitively debunked.

Consider the inconsistencies: One county "found" 100 new votes for Mr. Franken, due to an asserted clerical error. Decision? Add them. Ramsey County (St. Paul) ended up with 177 more votes than were recorded election day. Decision? Count them. Hennepin County (Minneapolis, where I voted -- once, to my knowledge) came up with 133 fewer votes than were recorded by the machines. Decision? Go with the machines' tally. All told, the recount in 25 precincts ended up producing more votes than voters who signed in that day.

There are NO inconsistencies here (see my link above) and the last sentence is embarrassingly dim for someone who apparently is a law professor and a former associate dean of a law school (actually it is embarrassingly dim for anyone, never mind a law professor). The absentee ballots quite obviously are the cause of more votes than voters who signed in on election day and for the countless time, there has been no evidence or claim that that there are counties where the vote totals exceeeded the number of people who legally voted.

 The following, as I have explained, is the only justifiable complaint. Paulson says:

...Then there's Minnesota's (first, so far) state Supreme Court decision, Coleman v. Ritchie, decided by a vote of 3-2 on Dec. 18. (Two justices recused themselves because they were members of the state canvassing board.) While not as bad as Florida's interventions, the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered local boards to count some previously excluded absentee ballots but not others. Astonishingly, the court left the decision as to which votes to count to the two competing campaigns and forbade local election officials to correct errors on their own.

No. That is not an accurate portrayal of what happened. The total number of falsely rejected absentee ballots were identified by local campaign officials independently (over 1300) which, subsequently campaigns got the right to veto due to a very unwise wise decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court. BUT the local election officials absolutely had the chance to correct the errors (going through some ballots that Coleman disputed 3 times). Not at all astonishingly Paulson gets it completely wrong. He continues:

The standards for evaluating rejected absentee ballots likewise must be uniform, with decisions made according to legal standards, not by partisan campaigns.

The standards were uniform and very clear (see my previous post). The problem was that originally Coleman didn't want any falsely rejected absentee ballots * (he thought he was winning then) and went to court to prevent it, which in turn led to the indefensible decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court to allow campaigns the right to veto ballots. (There is of course a very easy remedy if the Court does rule that, consistent with Bush vs. Gore, that standards must be applied uniformly to the ballots. Count the 400 odd ballots that were identified as falsely rejected by the local campaign officials but were vetoed by the campaigns. (And Franken will almost certainly still win)

*[On the absentee ballot question Coleman has showed a remarkable ability as a contortionist. From not wanting any counted (claiming there were NO falsely rejected absentee ballots) to desperately trying to limit the number counted via the courts to today's position of, can you believe this?, wanting all 12000 rejected absentee ballots counted. Classic]

Paulson concludes:

And what if there is no reliable way to determine in a recount who won, consistent with Bush v. Gore's requirements?

The Constitution's answer is a do-over.

Actually as has been painstakingly explained by me and many others, the recount in Minnesota has been as reliable as humanly possible.  Nate Silver adds, "there is certainly no sense in the Constitution that the Senate is supposed to say "Ehh... it's pretty close -- let's have a do-over!"."

Two Hail Marys are going on here. Count all the absentee ballots or redo the election. Neither are close to being warranted.

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Earlier today Franken's attempt to have Coleman's challenge summarily dismissed is in limbo with the court currently considering the motion. Tomorrow they will consider Coleman's counter-motion to have the court rule for a "summary judgement."

Maybe, though, Coleman finally sees the writing on the wall.

Norm Coleman (R) has taken a job with the Republican Jewish Coalition while contesting Democrat Al Franken’s lead in the Minnesota Senate race, his campaign confirmed Thursday.

In what could be seen as a sign that Coleman thinks his bid to return to the Senate may be lost, he has signed on to do consulting work for the group, which is comprised of a number GOP leaders.

Let's hope so anyways.

Update:

I think Brad at Bradblog has it exactly right on Reid's announcement today that the Democrats will probably try and seat Franken next week.

Comments

[Iconigon Originautica]

The Franken-vs-Coleman election-discrepancies situation has become a ridiculous charade of final-tally contradiction, covert dishonest and prejudicial miscountings, double-countings, misreportings, mishandlings of ballots, hiding of ballots, lawyers manipulations, and faulty judicial decisions (especially in ruling after ruling in democrat Franken's favor, to be honestly frank from this webauthor's point of view).

I speak of the Franken who libeled Karl Rove as being "human filth" (to quote Al's exact words in one of Franken's published books).

It all began with the Minnesota Secretary of State giving Coleman a 200+ vote lead over Franken with 100% of the precincts reporting - immediately after the 2009 November 8th election. Questionable "canvassing board" recounters changed that, giving Franken a 200+ vote lead over Coleman, and which the "official" Secretary of State tally now instead shows.

Too much is at stake to casually brush it off in Franken's favor. Not merely is it an issue of fairness pertaining to the Republican Party of Minnesota and the National Republican Party (now the minority and not the majority party) and ALL voters of Minnesota in general, but the survival of Israel and Jews is at stake. More importantly, the well-being of Christians and their vital influence in open society is in jeopardy, being that the present leadership of wrong-headed and anti-Biblical democrat women like San-Francisco-perversion-based feminist Pelosi, the pro-choice-for-abortion-homicide governor of Kansas, and Hillary "Vince Foster" Clinton are front and center in authority over men (along with their sometimes-indecently-mopheaded, feminist-sexist, female-media patsies), with somewhat-naiive accomplice Barack and White House staff burdened down with an obviously non-payable trillion(+)-dollar debt and rather irreversible collapse of the stock market, the Dow, and Wall Street.

Minnesotans in general now have less confidence in Secretary of State election officials, canvassing recount officials, subversive web-savvy democrat young men within and even outside the State conspiring to misinfluence election-contest recounters with extortion-like aversive media irrationalizations, election-day judges, and dishonest voters (including some gang-like "blacks") barging in at the last minute to various precinct voting stations, seeking to in effect illegally stuff ballot boxes without identification and without being duly registered beforehand. [Negroes as a race are not singled out because they are inherently inferior or dishonest as a race, though some might prejudicially misthink so. But they are conspicuous as a special skin-colored standout group which group and whose culture has significantly been associated with and guilty of not merely tolerating but promoting vulgar rap-noise pseudo-"music," spray-paint graffiti vandalism, irritating-to-listen-to eubonic jibberish, traffic-disrupting and falsely-"peaceful" street blockage, rioting and looting and burning, narcotics-related warfare injuring innocent bystanders, etc.]

Moreover, Minnesota has had a Tribune-publicized recent history of close election recounts being strangely slanted and decided in favor of democrats, to make things worse.

In view of all that, what is needed in this ridiculous circus of conflicting ballot misinterpretations and lack of uniformity concerning (not "regarding") the myriad confusing validation/invalidation procedures, plus parade of called-in testimonial witnesses, is a voluntary new election involving Franken vs. Coleman.

To help bypass bigotry on the part of democrat-leaning election officials and judges and avoid the antagonism and accusations of republican-leaning advocates, use of the significantly-impartial internet is an answer to resolve the so-far non-resolvable issue and to accurately signify the intent of EACH (qualified, voluntary, and capable) participating voter in Minnesota (and Minnesota alone, not absurdly-illegal seat-them-anyway Reid nor Schumer) pertaining to the two candidates previously mentioned.

It behooves Mark Ritchie (the Secretary of State) to mail out a postcard to all presently-registered voters in Minnesota informing them of the VOLUNTARY new election and all need-to-know parameters associated therewith, followed up by a deadline-dated phone call from the office of the Secretary of State to each voter as to whether or not they received the postcard and associated info.

Those now dead who voted for any of the November 8th senatorial candidates need not participate in the new election (humor intended), nor those who voted for senatorial candidates other than Franken or Coleman. The election should be held sometime soon (preferably on a Tuesday during early summer) after the three-judge election-contest-lawsuit panel has announced whatever conclusions they will announce.

Simply put, there are two types of voters who would participate in this election. One of those types would use a public library or personal home or business computer to input minimum but sufficient identification to a secure Secretary of State supercomputer website as to who their choice of candidate is, and such info would be immediately displayed real time on a master listing to all wanted to view that listing.

The format comprising the listing of such internet-utilizing voters (known as the Formatted Verifiable Voter Identification Vote, or FVVIV) should be:

{Last four digits of Social Security Number}-{Letters of First,Middle,Last Name}-{Date of Birth as to 4-digit Year-Month-Day}-{Choice of Candidate}.

In this webauthor's case, it would look like this on the Secretary of State's Master FVVIV Listing:

6507-DRB-1948-07-29-Coleman

[ You can tell the partisan perspective of yours truly. That, however, does not mean that the aforementioned format and suggested revote mechanism is one-sided, flawed, or partial. Keep in mind that even our Impartial Creator God has His "one-sided" preferences, and His "partisan"-like desires (of sorts), is completely fair and non-biased (in a Scripturally-definitive sense), which holy and righteous intentions will be accomplished - no matter what, and no matter who likes it or does not like it.

As previously stated, even God the Creator Himself generally does not interfere on the planetary gameboard environment of nature He has established, continues to maintain, and on which His human player make their righteous or wicked moves, so the Almighty is assuredly impartial:

Matthew 5:45 .....so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

The Lord sometimes does intervene (though not "interfere") for or against certain persons and people at certain times under sundry circumstances:

Amos 4:7 And I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain upon one city, and send no rain upon another city; one field would be rained upon, and the field on which it did not rain withered; Amos 4:8 so two or three cities wandered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied; yet you did not return to me," says the Lord.

Job 37:13 Whether for correction, or for His land, or for love, He causes it to happen ]

The FVVIV Listing would be posted in ascending-order format from left to right. In other words, the horizontal 6507 sample would be listed vertically before 6508, and so on.

Many of those receiving postcards who either are not willing or not able to use the internet would have to convey their election desires by phoning in to a live male operator by a specified dated deadline at the Secretary of State office.

Corresponding by snailmail instead involves many problems of mail not being correctly delivered to intended recipients, requests for snailmailed ballots with snailmailed return envelopes not done by a specified deadline date or interrupted along the way, mail delayed or altered en route from the Office of Secretary of State by a certain deadline date and/or mailed back to and received by the Secretary of State past a specified deadline date. If there was any delay or interruption along the way on the part of anyone for any cause, the snailmails and ballots for those individuals would of course not count and would be invalid.

A preferable mechanism for non-internet-using voters is to phone into a special Secretary-of-State-specified and never-a-busy-signal dedicated phone-line number at the Office of Secretary of State and speak to a live male operator to state their Formatted Verifiable Voter Identification Vote, which official would then promptly type it into the Master List of FVVIVs.

Such would then immediately be accessible to view by anyone on the internet in real time to everyone. Any discrepanies of fraud or misrepresentation as to what FVVIVs are listed related to a person's typed or spoken voting desires would have to be promptly resolved before a stated deadline date by the objector presenting himself with his or her drivers license to a local or suburban motor-vehicle registration office, in which the clerk would promptly access and make corrected changes to the Master List of FVVIVs concordant with the objector's certified desires, which corrections would immediately be listed real time for immediate viewing by anyone and everyone wanting to see them.

A final and official pronouncement of the Minneosta senator elected would be then made and officialized by the Minnesota Secretary of State website, thus known to and publicized by the media on screen and in print.

- http://angelfire.com/theforce/big10/revote

[bh]

lol ...the survival of Israel and Jews at stake was particularly rich... maybe this was satire. So hard to tell nowadays.

if it wasn't then in regards to your claims regarding coleman/franken they stand (like coleman's, unlike mine) unproven.