I had really, really hoped that it wouldn't be this way. Should have known better. Al Franken and his bobos are working feverishly to steal the election. The miraculous reports keep coming in -- oops, we missed 100 votes in Pine Island, and another 100 in Mountain Iron, and a few more here and there. Pretty soon Al Franken will be leading by a vote or two. And then it will be time to stop counting. This is what happened in Florida in 2000. It didn't work. This is also what happened in Washington state in 2004. It did work then.
Pretty simple, GOP. Pretty simple, Tim Pawlenty. You have to stop this now. Are there mistakes made on election day? Sure. But it would stand to reason that some of the mistakes would redound to the benefit of Coleman, or maybe Dean Barkley. That they all seem to be working to benefit Franken leaves an unmistakable smell. You know exactly who the Secretary of State is and his history. You can't let this stand, folks.
You know what's happening, kids. It's not the people who vote who decide a close election. It's the people who count the votes. If you wonder who I'm paraphrasing, here's a hint. And if you think I'm overreacting, think again.
Raise your voices. Don't let this happen.
4 comments:
Mark,
I certainly understand your concerns, and you are absolutely correct to remain vigilant and expect a clean recount. But how can you demand that the Governor stop a process that, to my knowledge, is mandated by your state's constitution? Am I missing your point?
Rich
Here's what I want, Rich. I want Pawlenty to ensure that every step that Ritchie takes is done will full transparency. The Mountain Iron case involves ballots that were date stamped two days before the election. There aren't that many people who live in Mountain Iron, MN. Ditto the 100 extra votes in Pine Island. These are really small towns, Rich. It would be like finding an extra hundred votes in someplace like Winslow, IL. It doesn't happen.
Minnesota also has a very large Somali immigrant community. There is evidence that so-called Somali "leaders" were telling people at the polls that if they didn't vote for Franken, their votes for Obama wouldn't count. Franken may have gotten some of those votes anyway, maybe most of them. But it was fraud.
I know Pawlenty can't stop the recount. But he can ride herd on Ritchie and shine his powerful spotlight on the practices that currently underway, practices that if allowed to continue will inexorably tilt the election results to Franken. That means no pulling extra ballots out of cold storage. That means not throwing out votes in Republican precincts. That means a clean recount. It is highly suspicious that all the movement since Tuesday has been in Franken's direction, no?
Mark,
without the ability to see what is going on up close, it is difficult for me to say whether the margins shifting toward Franken are suspicious or not. You alluded to the Gregore/Rossi case in WA state in 2004. I remember following that case fairly closely. Like the current MN case, it was very close in votes (less than .5%), and initially, the election was called for Republican candidate Rossi. The first automated recount also found for Rossi, but at a smaller margin, and a second automated recount (by automated, I mean by machine) ended with a similar result, i.e. closer, but still leaning toward the GOP side. It wasn't until a third and final hand count was done that Democrat Gregore won by something like 100 votes. The hand recount was notable because Democrats claimed that because many Dem votes come from areas that are economically downscale, their voting equipment and infrastructure tends to be older and more prone to yielding bad reads and malfunctions. The Dems fought for a hand recount from the start, and finally used the fact that 3 recounts had yielded 3 different results as evidence that there were inherent problems with the machine counts. I believe the whole process took over 2 months, and while a lot of folks fought bitterly during the process, I think the outcome was eventually accepted by most people. In fact, Gregore just beat Rossi pretty decisively in their rematch.
Look, I am sure that both sides have an army of lawyers on this. I saw today that Coleman had challenged some ballots in Minneapolis. His team is going to do everything they can to keep the ball in their court, and Franken is going to take every measure to get every ballot counted that he can find.
The important thing is that every valid ballot be counted, and that legal measures be followed every step of the way. Coleman called a press conference to announce himself winner the other day, and another to try to pressure Franken into waiving the recount. He was criticized by a lot of misguided Dems for these moves, but those Dems were wrong: Both measures were perfectly legal tactics to firm up his position, as was the court case today.
I am sure we can expect a lot of this back and forth over the next couple of months. I guess all I am saying is, don't get too caught up in the tactics. Invoking Stalin at the onset smacks of Godwin's law. MN is a state with a Republican Governor and a pretty clean reputation. You don't want this process ending with one party or the other stopping the election process just because they're unhappy with it. This is not what is supposed to happen in our country. Let the majority of the people decide who governs, and hope and pray that the GOP has good lawyers.
I will reiterate what I said the other day. I am pulling for Coleman. I think he serves both parties' and our country's purposes better than Franken. Not just because he is fairly liberal, but also because the last thing a President Obama needs is to have a self-serving, pompous court jester like Franken stirring up controversy while the new President is trying to build an outreach to the Right.
Let's hope this recount goes as it should. To my mind, that would mean locking the ballots down, agreeing to a hand recount, hammering out the rules for a manual recount, and commencing said recount ASAP. That the voters of MN get their way, and not either political party or candidate, should be the primary objective.
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
Two things:
1) I'm not comparing Franken to Stalin. All I'm saying is that what Stalin said is true. And if the people who are counting the votes favor Franken, Norm doesn't have a chance. That's not Godwin's Law, that's a fact.
2) And the votes that Coleman is challenging damned well ought to be challenged. As I explained, Mountain Iron isn't a big enough town to have 100 extra votes. These are phantom votes. And the 32 votes that Coleman is challenging were absentee ballots that were supposedly sitting in an election official's car for five days before miraculously appearing. You tell me - would you count those votes?
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