Coleman, Franken campaigns go on a final ballot roundup

On Tuesday, Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken made their last requests to the judges now deciding who won last year's U.S. Senate race.

[Minnesotan]

Yawn ! Streach !- Coleman has bored Minnesota with his politics.

[Fred Arbogast]

That would be justice - if all the donors who had their info leaked and fat cat Rebublican Senators who donated the maximum amount to Coleman's defense fund had their money used to pay for Franken's lawyers. Heehee.

[Sharon - Eagan]

Doesn't Norm get it! He needs to give it up. Or did he get use to the perks in Washington and that why he will not give this up!

[I only had tee martoonies]

Fred Arbogast wrote:

That would be justice - if all the donors who had their info leaked and fat cat Rebublican Senators who donated the maximum amount to Coleman's defense fund had their money used to pay for Franken's lawyers. Heehee.

This is one of the dumbest posts I have ever read. Where do you suppose Franken got his funds? From fat cat liberals who live in other states? Duh. Heehee? Two sentances was all you needed to show what a childish putz you are.

[Former Ranger]

Coleman: Count only rejected ballots from counties I'm strong in.
Franken: Count only rejected ballots from counties I'm strong in.
Tired of this already.

[Get er Done]

Enough of this 4 corner defense. Being a US Senator is about serving one's country and the citizens of one's state -- not serving one's self or party.

The State required recount ran its process and declared a winner. At the end of this appeal -- the winner should be certified and seated.
Yes, if Coleman or Franken believe this all about them or their party they can waste the courts time and resources and leave the citizens of Minnesota underrepresented -- but they will have abandoned all pretense of the concept of representing or serving the people.

[The Rad Rethuglican]

Coleman's final filing is the logical culmination of his entire effort to reverse the certified election recount results: a complete shambles and mish-mash of contradictory assertions.

By the end, Joe Friedberg's head was spinning around like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist, as he tried to create the hallucination of at least a tiny bit of consistency in Coleman's presentation.

It has been confirmed that the reporters are on the verge of nervous breakdowns as a result of trying to portray Coleman's effort as something that can be explained in English, or any other language for that matter, including Esperanto.

The only potentially successful strategy employed by Coleman's legal team, led by Ben ( I escaped from the House of Wax ) Ginsberg has been the obvious attempt to induce a collective case of vertigo among the three-judge panel.

It's a miracle that the entire courtroom did not end up viewing the end of the trial from their backs, felled by the psychedelic effects of the spectacle of Norm's lawyers launching theories that bordered on crimes against nature.

Never before has the Chaos Theory been presented in such a volcanic stage of legal frenzy, as were the various theories seeking plausible evidence, as advanced by Coleman's counsel during this trial.

Will the panel be able to cut through the morass of obfuscation created by Coleman's legal team?

Oh yes. And the result will be an additional 140 to 175 votes to Franken's margin of victory, although it could be as much as 300 more.

It's time for Senator Franken to send Haz-Mat teams into former Senator Coleman's Minnesota and D.C. offices to render those spaces once again fit for human occupation.

[MN Nice]

Get er Done wrote:

Enough of this 4 corner defense. Being a US Senator is about serving one's country and the citizens of one's state -- not serving one's self or party.

I agree 'Get er Done', but when you're talking about politicians getting millions of dollars donated to their election, serving one's country and the citizens of one's state no longer applies. Common sense should tell you that. The election process is inherently corrupt when you have millions of dollars being exchanged from private parties to public officials. Every year the stakes get higher and higher and the average citizen gets pushed further and further to the back. The absurdity of this recount trial shows how high the stakes really are.

[hamboner911]

nimrods both of them.
Which is the lesser of the two evils ?

[hamboner911]

will the real slim shady please stand up please stand up

[Latte Liberal]

I only had tee martoonies wrote:

<quoted text>This is one of the dumbest posts I have ever read. Where do you suppose Franken got his funds? From fat cat liberals who live in other states? Duh. Heehee? Two sentances was all you needed to show what a childish putz you are.

Yours was inane, but not even close to the dumbest post ever. However, it is rather silly of you to see the parallels where are none. Here are some highlights:
1) Franken campaign had not leaked the donor information like Coleman has
2) If, in the rarest of chances Coleman prevails, Franken fat cat donors will not be required to pay for Coleman's legal fees
3) Franken won the election and has a certificate to prove it, whereas
4) An empty suit that is Coleman filed an empty suit where he proved nothing.

There's more, but that ought to carry you to the next "sentance"/martoony.

Carry on,
~ Latte

[Gilbert Grape]

to much drama and bs for me in here

[clam4myclown]

dumb & dumber

[Lawrence]

What does the math say?

One of the two election candidates believes that the standards imposed on counting absentee ballots by the Contest panel are more restrictive than those used by the counties on election day. And that if these Contest standards had been imposed on Election Day, there would have been thousands of ballots deemed “illegally cast” that would have not been counted. And evidence has been provided by witness testimony from some county election officials that indeed, it does appear that there are some cases where the Contest standards require more verification of conformance to state law than do some county standards.

But is that all of the story? Perhaps not.

It turns out that there are some cases where the Contest standards accept ballots as legally cast that many of the counties did not – such as when the counties did not accept proof of voter registration because the voter had mistakenly put the registration card in the secrecy envelope. But the Contest judges allowed these ballots to be opened, because the mistake did not violate Minnesota state law. This is a case where the standards set by the Contest judges is actually less restrictive than many county standards.

So what is to be made of this? Are the Contest standards overall more restrictive than the county standards, and then there are thousands of votes that would have not been counted on Election Day using these standards? Or, are the Contest standards less restrictive than the county standards - that would then perhaps explain a rationale of why thousands of the absentee ballots identified as “properly rejected” by the counties should then be opened and counted.

Obviously the Contest standards cannot overall at the same time be both more restrictive and less restrictive than the county standards. So it makes no sense to say that thousands of votes would have been deemed “illegally cast” using the Contest standards rather than the county standards, and in the same breath say that the county standards are too strict and the Contest standards must be adjusted to permit counting thousands more of the county “properly rejected ballots”.

As it turns out, if a total of 413 ballots (the number of ballots rejected by the 2 campaigns) happens to be the exact number of ballots the Contest judges rule to be opened and counted – then the overall rate of rejection of the absentee ballots using county standards will be precisely the same rate as using the Contest standards. And that is because out of about 290,000 absentee ballots, both the Contest judges and the county officials will have agreed that the correct number of ballots has been “properly rejected”.

But does any of this really matter, in terms of selecting a winner of the race? Probably not. Because in a close election where both candidates have similar vote totals, tighter standards or looser standards affect both candidates the same, and there is no reason to believe using either standard changes the outcome of the race. Of course, if ballots can be cherry-picked such that they are not representative of the overall population of ballots, then candidates can certainly benefit.

[rich]

The Rad Rethuglican wrote:

Coleman's final filing is the logical culmination of his entire effort to reverse the certified election recount results: a complete shambles and mish-mash of contradictory assertions.
By the end, Joe Friedberg's head was spinning around like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist, as he tried to create the hallucination of at least a tiny bit of consistency in Coleman's presentation.
It has been confirmed that the reporters are on the verge of nervous breakdowns as a result of trying to portray Coleman's effort as something that can be explained in English, or any other language for that matter, including Esperanto.
The only potentially successful strategy employed by Coleman's legal team, led by Ben ( I escaped from the House of Wax ) Ginsberg has been the obvious attempt to induce a collective case of vertigo among the three-judge panel.
It's a miracle that the entire courtroom did not end up viewing the end of the trial from their backs, felled by the psychedelic effects of the spectacle of Norm's lawyers launching theories that bordered on crimes against nature.
Never before has the Chaos Theory been presented in such a volcanic stage of legal frenzy, as were the various theories seeking plausible evidence, as advanced by Coleman's counsel during this trial.
Will the panel be able to cut through the morass of obfuscation created by Coleman's legal team?
Oh yes. And the result will be an additional 140 to 175 votes to Franken's margin of victory, although it could be as much as 300 more.
It's time for Senator Franken to send Haz-Mat teams into former Senator Coleman's Minnesota and D.C. offices to render those spaces once again fit for human occupation.

I keep waiting to find out where the meeting is supposed to be. I cannot wait to attend

[kwoods]

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger,
Your article states, "They now must decide how many uncounted absentee ballots should be counted, whether there was double counting in the official recount and whether Election Day totals can properly be substituted for recounted totals."

It is true, like in dealing with the 133 Phantom ballots, the three (3) judge panel will need to determine if they are going to follow state law, which requires a physical manual hand count of each ballot to determine voter intent which is impossible to count Phantom ballots, or if they are going to continue the violations of state law perpetrated by the Election Canvassing Board.

Franken's attorney, David L. Lillehaug, even as much as admitted Phantom ballots cannot be counted when he stated, the Canvassing Board’s duty was to make sure every vote counts, "Minnesota election law states that '[i]n canvassing ballots the great object is to ascertain and to give effect to the intention of the voter.'"

[ACORN]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/la...
Scary ACORN those behiund angry al

[Get er done]

Count em up, make the decision, clear the court calender
for Norm's many legal problems:
Kazeminy suits, gifts, cash, illegal data, and now why
did US Bank give $700,000+ refinance on Norms house valued at
$600,000 just a couple months after doing it for $350,000?

[Flatblade]

ACORN wrote:

http://www.foxnews.com/politic s/2009/03/17/lawmakers-concern ed-role-acorn-census/
Scary ACORN those behiund angry al

Well, it didn't take more than one sentence to dismiss this report. Here's the sentence:

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The immediate response is: "what voter fraud?" The article goes on to point out charges and convictions by ACORN employees for registration fraud. Of course, not the same thing and the ACORN spokesman accurately states that the organization has been convicted of nothing. Nice article FoxNews!

[Just Saying]

Maybe Senator Coleman can get his seat back by having the National Guard have one of those coups or whatever they're called. That works in other countries. I don't care how we get him back to the Senate just as long as we do it. It's good for us and the rest of the country. If we got to arrest all the democrats then that's the way it goes.

I'm just saying.