Jaimie Etkin: The Devil Wore Manolos
Al Franken and Norm Coleman's Minnesota Mistake
Filed under: Opinions
Up here in Minnesota we have a mess, a real mess. And I'm not talking about the slushy, salt covered roads. During the elections back in November, nearly equal numbers of Minnesotans wanted Republican Senator Norm Coleman and Democratic comedian Al Franken as their senator. After two months of counting and recounting, the final tally is 1,212,431 for Franken and1,212,206 for Coleman. A difference of 225!
On election night Coleman won with 621 votes. Now Franken, who appears to have benefited from some questionable vote counting -- never counted votes, double counted votes -- is ahead. The Coleman Campaign has taken the fight to the courts. (Something the Franken Campaign was also expected to do if they came out on the losing end.) What we really needed was a re-vote. This was a tie.
This is an example of a ballot thrown out by one of the campaigns. In Minnesota a ballot is only to be excluded when the intent of the voter is not clear. But if either of the campaigns challenged it, the vote wasn't counted. Can you tell the intent of this voter? (Click here to see the challenged ballot and the reason for the challenge.)
Let's remember that our kids are watching how we grown-ups handle a fight this close to call. We need to be advocates for fair fighting. We also need to teach our kids at some point it is better to be wronged than continue to fight to show you're right. If Coleman drags this out to much longer, he runs the real danger of appearing like a a sore loser. Franken's gloating will probably ensure that we Minnesotans will send him packing to New York (where he lived until just recently) after just one term.
A 0.0077 percent margin of victory out of 2.4 million eligible voters isn't a big margin, but it is still a margin. Set the right example, guys. Sometimes it's better to just stop fighting, pick up your ball and walk home. How do we want our kids to react when they lose a close game?
(Full disclosure, I did some music for Coleman in 1993 when he was running for St. Paul mayor and Franken was an-almost guest on Cooking for Dads.)
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
1-11-2009 @ 11:12PM
Kellie said...I would tell my child to make sure every vote he got counted. Because that is only fair to the VOTER. I don't care for either candidate, but they both deserve to get every single vote counted towards them.
Reply
1-12-2009 @ 1:34AM
cookingfordads said...I totally agree. It just seems there comes a point when you're doing yourself more harm than good in fighting on.
1-12-2009 @ 9:16AM
SHARI said...IF THIS IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN ,WINNING BY CHEATING. WHAT IS THAT TEACHING OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN ? I'AM VERY CONCERNED.
Reply
1-12-2009 @ 9:17AM
laurie said...No one "cheated" in this election. All vote-counting decisions are reviewed by numerous impartial people (or the ones with a known bias are balanced by others on the other side). The election is truly close! I don't know about Minnesota, but the state law in Virginia says that election officials are to resolve an absolute tie by FLIPPING A COIN! At some point, a final decision is required.
Still, since there was a third party candidate in this election, it might have been better to hold a runoff between the top two, as was done in Georgia. Too late for that now.
1-12-2009 @ 9:17AM
Chuck Iklodi said...Now, there is a typical liberal solution. Why make an effort to confirm that everything was done correctly when you can just through up your hands and say, "oh, well, why care if the count was legitimate, let's just seat Franken".
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1-13-2009 @ 9:21AM
Pat said...Of couse the count was legitimate. Each questionable vote was reviewed by the 5-member Minnesota Canvassing Board. By the way, only one of the 5 members of this board is a Democrat, you can hardly say it was biased. Now Coleman is trying to find a way to steal the election. and all the sore looser Republicans are chearing him on.
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