The Minnesota Supreme Court has declared Al Franken the winner of the contested Minnesota senate race against Norm Coleman. Coleman's challenge was dismissed in an unanimous vote, stating that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast" and is entitled "to receive the certificate of election as United States senator from the state of Minnesota."
Its about time! Franken was selected by the Minnesota citizens eight months ago...and they have been denied a senate seat since during Coleman's court challenges.
Coleman could still take it to the Federal level, but its unlikely that would change anything. In the meantime, Minnesota will finally have their senator, as the govenor promised that he would sign Franken's election certificate if the court ruled that way.
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6 comments:
What I find the most ironic about this whole thing is that we can send people to the moon, but can't seem to figure out a honest and reliable way to vote. You'd think with the Bush/Kerry controversy years ago, they could have improved the system. Even this past election had issues with whether ineligible voters were registered, whether voters were registered multiple times, and whether the votes cast had been correctly counted. You would think by now, they would have addressed these issues and smoothed everything out.
What gets worse is when we try and "fix" other countries systems when our is so broken.
As to Franken, I am glad that a decision has been made. I'm not particularly thrilled with him but Minnesota hasn't exactly been known for their smart decisions.....a wrestler and now a comedian. Then again, it could always be worse. :-)
Let's try this again.....Bush/Gore controversy. It's been a long day, what can I say!
Its alright. I know the feeling!
Yeah, I agree. We need to fix the system. We need to fix it in a lot of areas (voting, immigration, justice, etc)...
Btw, I've added you to my blogroll :)
Thanks for the add, I believe you are already on mine. I first found you through Pam and have been following the onslaught of insults and nastiness that has erupted. Better you than me, I wouldn't have had half the patience that you and Pam have. Anyway I look forward to more posts from you....
Thanks! I'll try and comment on yours once in awhile...been SUPER busy this last week. I mostly only blog at work when it gets slow.
I agree that at some point it becomes ungentlemanly, unpatriotic, and just plain wrong to keep contesting election results that have been duly certified and that the constituents want to accept. Al Gore was a true statesman in the end by gracefully accepting the Supreme Court ruling when he probably could have kept fighting - he clearly won the popular vote. I think the bigger issue is what Jennifer mentions: we've got to come up with a better way of securing the election process. When U.S. Senate and Presidential elections come down to margins of a few hundred votes, we need to have some assurance that there was no voter fraud. Maybe Bush wouldn't have been so hated if the left felt he legimately won the first election. Maybe Coleman and his supporters would give up more gracefully if they didn't truly believe that the election was stolen by the likes of ACORN. Hell, maybe it was for all we know. That's the point - the system is so broken that we can't know for sure. And related to your prior post, the potential of stealing elections combined with how Washington works (so many vote the party line regardless of what the majority of their constituents want) - it's a pretty scary problem.
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