Monday, January 5, 2009

Al Franken and the Funny Business of Minnesota

An article in today's Wall Street Journal details all the tricks comedian Al Franken used to steal the Senate election in Minnesota.
Among them:
  • once he claimed a 225-vote lead, the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down
  • more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes
  • Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County 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, the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Franken a gain of 46 votes
  • 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. This gave Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency
If the Canvassing Board certifies Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

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