On 07-16-10, DAVE DRUM said to TIM RICHARDSON:


DD>Which has bugger-all to do with the subject at hand. If you want to bring
DD>up one of your off-centre rants kindly do it on your own and not by
DD>attempting to piggy-back it on a non-related thread.



Mischief in Minnesota? - WSJ

REVIEW & OUTLOOKNOVEMBER 12, 2008  Mischief in Minnesota?


Al Franken's recount isn't funny.

You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But
judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind
adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al
Franken.

When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm
Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only
477.


As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of
Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount
hasn't even begun.


The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which election officials are
obliged to double-check their initial results. Minnesota is required to do
these audits, and it isn't unusual for officials to report that they
transposed a number here or there. In a normal audit, these mistakes could be
expected to cut both ways. Instead, nearly every "fix" has gone for Mr.
Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.


For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director
of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The
Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these
absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the
polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.


Up in Two Harbors, another liberal outpost, Mr. Franken picked up an
additional 246 votes. In Partridge Township, he racked up another 100.

Election officials in both places claim they initially miscommunicated the
numbers. Odd, because in the Two Harbors precinct, none of the other contests
recorded any changes in their vote totals.


According to conservative statistician John Lott, Mr. Franken's gains so far
are 2.5 times the corrections made for Barack Obama in the state, and nearly
three times the gains for Democrats across Minnesota Congressional races. Mr.
Lott notes that Mr. Franken's "new" votes equal more than all the
changes for
all the precincts in the entire state for the Presidential, Congressional and
statehouse races combined (482 votes).


This entire process is being overseen by Democratic Secretary of State Mark
Ritchie, who isn't exactly a nonpartisan observer. One of Mr. Ritchie's
financial supporters during his 2006 run for office was a 527 group called the
Secretary of State Project, which was co-founded by James Rucker, who came
from MoveOn.org. The group says it is devoted to putting Democrats in jobs
where they can "protect elections."


Mr. Ritchie is also an ally of the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now, or Acorn, of fraudulent voter-registration fame. That relationship
might explain why prior to the election Mr. Ritchie waved off evidence of
thousands of irregularities on Minnesota voter rolls, claiming that
accusations of fraud were nothing more than "desperateness" from
Republicans.



This Election Has Not 'Realigned' the Country--- Jennifer Marsico


Mr. Franken and fellow Democrats are already waging a full-scale public
pressure campaign to help turn the recount their way. That includes a push to
turn what should be a straightforward count of existing legal ballots into a
complete do-over -- mau-mauing election officials into accepting tossed
ballots. The Franken campaign recently showed up before the Hennepin County
canvassing board, demanding that its liberal members count 461 previously
rejected ballots. To the board's credit, they unanimously voted no.


The Franken campaign has also been wrapping itself around Barack Obama's
popularity to increase its recount potential. Minnesota has a voter intent
law, which means that election officials can take a second look at ambiguous
ballots.


Mr. Franken's people are already arguing that a vote for Mr. Obama certainly
indicated a vote for Mr. Franken. This can't possibly be true, however,
because nearly every campaign poll showed Mr. Franken lagging Mr. Obama by
five to 15 percentage points -- and on Election Day he trailed by 12.2%. Mr.
Franken ran a nasty, polarizing campaign, and in any case he was part of a
three-man contest.


The Coleman team is demanding the tapes from the voting machines on election
night, and that's the least Mr. Ritchie can do. The Secretary of State should
also investigate miraculous discoveries like the "forgotten" 32
car ballots.

He needs to show voters, the press and the Coleman team that he's running a
transparent process that focuses on previously counted votes, rather than
changing the rules after the election is over.


With their party only three Senate seats from the 60 needed to break a
filibuster (and two still not decided), Democrats have a political incentive
to cut corners to steal a seat if they can get away with it. Mr. Franken and
his left-wing allies also know that if Mr. Franken couldn't win election in
this fabulous Democratic year, then the not-so-funnyman never will. If
Minnesota wants to retain its reputation as a state with clean elections, it
needs to run an honest recount.

FD HIDDEN DIV

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*Durango b301 #PE*