Minnesota Certifies Franken Victory in Senate Race
Today the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which conducted the recount, certified Al Franken's victory over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman by 225 votes.
The Star Tribune reported this afternoon that "attorneys for Coleman said they would file a lawsuit within 24 hours.
"Minnesota law prohibits the state from issuing a certificate of election until such a court case is resolved, which, as of today, leaves Minnesota with a single senator as Congress prepares to convene Tuesday."
Despite today's well written though criticized Wall Street Journal editorial on the recount, I don't see the lawsuit changing the result.
The news account says Coleman seeks in part to include 654 more absentee ballots in the count. I grant that there was some funny business in the recount, but the most questionable call was a decision that netted Franken 37 votes. If Coleman were to win on that, and the 654 question, I don't see how he nets nearly 200 votes from the 654 he wants included in the count. Yes, it is possible, but it seems to me it's a real long shot.
The obvious issue, to me if not anyone else, is why absentee ballots were only checked so as to include more ballots. There is nothing wrong with that. If a ballot was validly cast, it should be counted. But this is selection bias in a process that is supposed to check the accuracy of the whole count.
To ensure that no bias creeps in, they should also check the validity of the absentee ballots that were counted too. The Franken campaign checked on those ballots that were rejected and got 933 included during the recount.
However it would seem likely that if election workers made mistakes so as to reject 933 improperly, then they also included some, perhaps a lot more, ballots improperly in the original count that were not cast properly. I'm not sure if this is even possible to do, even if everyone agreed it should be done. For all I know, the ballots may have been opened and counted long ago and there is no way to check it again.
This is a tough argument to make politically. But if the goal is to get a precise count under the rule of law, you can't just look at part of the picture. That introduces a bias in the results.
I grant that the whole process has taken a long time and that a check on all the absentee ballots would take even longer. However, there should not be any pretense that we have the right answer to the question of how many valid votes were case for each candidate?
The reality is that the election was effectively a tie. We will never know who really won, though I expect Franken will be the next senator.
Perhaps the two candidates should have just asked for a do over in the first place.
