“My God, did you see the size of that canary?”
Isn’t making observations about the size of moderators rather personal, and likely to get you in trouble? 
But did you see the next sentence in your cite:
There are many reasons why some absentee ballots were not counted, and I don’t think anybody is claiming they ALL should be counted.
For example, Minnesota law is pretty clear on an absentee voter coming to the polling place and voting in person, thus replacing his absentee ballot. Not much question about those, and they aren’t in dispute.
I don’t know about the ‘not properly registered voter’ ones. If they weren’t registered, why did the city clerk send them an absentee ballot in the first place? And since Minnesota allows same-day registration, I’m not sure why their absentee ballot application wouldn’t count as registration. Are these maybe absentee ballots that the clerk’s office delivered to the wrong precinct, thus the voter wasn’t on the registration rolls in that precinct? If so, this is an error on the part of the clerk’s office – the voter did nothing wrong, and is entitled to have their vote counted.
Most of the dispute centers on ballots where someone in the clerk’s office decided the signatures didn’t match, or where the clerk’s office made a mistake in signing or processing the absentee ballot.
Another Mn Supreme Court case, much newer than those 150-year-old ones you cited, says that “a technical error” or “an innocent failure” by the voter should not exclude their vote. Again, like the conflicting laws, we have conflicting Supreme Court precedents – the Court is the proper body to decide such conflicts.
And you should note that these absentee ballots ate still sealed inside envelopes. Nobody knows (except the voter) which candidate they support.
Actually, I think the Coleman campaign did declare victory, before the recount even started.
Is it at all possible that these sealed absentee votes that the clerk “forgot” to sign could be phony? Is that not why they have the requirement for that signature?
I suppose it’s possible, but they would have to be phonied up by the Clerk, so why wouldn’t they also sign the phony ones, too?
Anybody else trying to phony up absentee ballots would be caught by the paper trail. You have to request an absentee ballot in writing, that is kept by the City Clerk. They mail or hand-deliver the ballot to you, a record of that is kept. You return the filled-out absentee ballot by mail or in person to the Clerk’s office, a record is kept of that receipt. Then on election day, the absentee ballots are sorted and delivered to the precincts, a record is kept by the Clerk’s office of the ballots sent out, and a record kept at each precinct of the number received.
So the only possibility of phonies I can see is if the Clerk or someone in their office did it. And they could cheat much easier by, say, ‘accidentally’ transposing numbers when writing down totals from the machines. [This happened in one Minnesota Precinct, where a tired election official recorded Frankens’ 237 votes as 23 votes. But that was caught the next day, when they reviewed the results after a good nights sleep.]
A person whose absentee vote wasn’t counted (for no apparent reason at all) was on Minnesota public radio this morning and she was pissed about the efforts to prevent her vote from being counted. The funny thing is she was a Coleman voter. I was thinking about her when I watched Coleman’s head lawyer on the news tonight explaining why validly cast votes should not be counted.
Also, a guy who claimed to be the Lizard People voter was on MPR yesterday. He said he voted for Franken and the rest was a joke.
The senate has to seat the winner of this election no matter what eventually occurs here with the recount. I think there is a growing chance that MN will have no one in this seat for the next six years. This is a real possibility if Coleman wins a scant majority in the recount and wins efforts to prevent seemingly legitimate votes from being counted. Dems are still very legitimately pissed about Florida and if another Republican wins by stopping votes from being counted it could result in a situation where the Senate simply says “no.”
I certainly hope not; this is a Very Bad Idea. If after the recount, wrangling, and litigation concludes, Coleman has more votes, then he is the Senator from Minnesota. It’s none of the Senate’s business to decide, “Well, he didn’t really win the election.”
I’m pretty sure it is, actually, in cases like this, I think it’s their prerogative to decide that an election did not meet their standards.
Wouldn’t that be nice and non-partisan? ‘The Democrat only lost by a couple of hundred votes, and we need a filibuster-proof margin - fuck democracy, seat the Democrat’.
In other news, the state canvassing board has decided unanimously to abide by the Supreme Court decision (cite). Continuing in the proud traditions of Sore-Loserman, and with Coleman’s margin widening slightly with most of the recount completed, the Franken camp has promised further new and creative ways of getting the results they want -
Regards,
Shodan
I didn’t say they should, I only said they could. And note that I didn’t mention anything about the outcome in that case.
Shodan, you may not be aware of this, but the margin at this point doesn’t mean much. Both sides are challenging ballots left and right, whether or not those ballots are clearly marked, so that they can claim they went into the final stage ahead.
And would you fucking cut it out with the goddamn ‘Sore-Loserman’ thing? It’s petty and childish. Altering someone’s name – and doing so repeatedly – is a practice that does not belong in a serious debate.
Did you suppose I was attempting to refute one of your assertions? I thought I was making an assertion of my own (that your line of argument was dishonest), and attempting to support that assertion with an examination of the editorial from which you drew your quotes.
How clumsy of me to have not gotten my intention across.
You’re the one who submitted a sentence fragment with the word “either”. Typically, when the word “either” appears in a sentence (or sentence fragment), one is expected to look for two or more competing propositions, joined by an “or”. Sure enough, the editorial did provide two competing propositions, separated by the word “or”. Yet when you provided your sentence fragment, you included only one of the propositions. The fact that the proposition included the word “or” makes it appear that you are inviting the reader to suppose that you have provided both of the editorial’s propositions, when you have only provided one.
AFAIAC, the word “gibberish” applies to the posting of a sentence fragment, divorced from its original context, in an effort to make a point that has already been refuted.
The actual refutation of your assertion that the paper called for violations of state law was ably handled by Brain Glutton.
Actually, what the article says is:
“The board members … agreed at their hour-long meeting Wednesday that the panel doesn’t have authority under state law to include rejected absentee ballots in a recount. The board said it was not ruling on the merits of the Franken argument.”
So they aren’t abiding by anything; they just decided it’s not their call to make.
Would you happen to have a cite that the Senate has ever refused to seat an elected Senator, or even considered it, because the election did not meet their standards?
I fully support Franken doing all that he can, within the limits of the election laws of Minnesota and the United States, to ensure that all votes for him are counted and that all votes for Coleman are not counted. All is fair in love and politics, after all. But when all is said and done: the election boards have counted, the courts have ruled, the gantlet has been run - if Coleman wins, well, he wins, that’s all.
I don’t know how much of a minority I’m in on this, and I’m too radical to be a Democrat anyway, but… I didn’t want him to run, I figured any American cheese on white bread with mayo Lutheran would carry the day against a Dickosaurus Rex like Coleman. Why take the risk?
Now, I like his politics just fine, and have little doubt that he’s serious, and would make a credible public servant. That’s not what bugs me. What bugs me is that he must know this as well as I do, and he chose to take the risk. He used money and “star power” to leverage an opportunity that he’s qualified to deserve, but should have abstained nonetheless. Sen. Klobuchar has all the star power and charisma of cole slaw, and she got elected just fine.
As well, Coleman is a shallow opportunist, and if re-elected, will most likely discover that he was always a centrist, a long-standing critic of Bush policies, and eager to work in a bi-partisan fashion. So, six of one, five and a quarter of the other. Tomato, potato.
Still, wish he hadn’t of run. Shows a weakness in judgment to take that risk, if his commitment to progressive politics is central to his purpose.
On the gripping hand, I recall that I didn’t think Wellstone should have run again when he promised he wouldn’t. Voted for him anyway, and when the war madness was loose, he made me proud. Not Minnesota proud, but species proud.
I am quite aware of it. It makes no difference to anything I have posted. Coleman started the recount slightly ahead in the voting, and that margin has increased slightly with 88% of the recount completed. As I stated.
No. It’s entirely apt. Get over it.
Incorrect. As I posted earlier -
And kaylasdad, your allegations are as nonsensical now as when you first made them.
On reflection, I was going to repost and re-explain it, but that would be a waste of time. You can’t argue with gibberish.
Regards,
Shodan
I know. They are precisely as nonsensical now as they were three days ago. Their nonsensicality, which began at zero, has not increased by a scintilla.
I do hope I managed to present them with a bit more clarity, though.
Oh, I quite agree.
You’re telling me. I’m trying to argue against gibberish, and it’s exhausting.
And yet you persist in composing snippets of gibberish, and trying to use them to argue with.
Oh, well. Perhaps your last two sentences above are an indication that you’re beginning to be blessed with some self-awareness. I can only wish you well in your quest.
Then inclusion of that fact had nothing to do with whatever point you were making, it was just a random observation.
Works for me.
Anything new on that attempt by the Franken campaign to claim the disputed absentee vote in which someone filled in the circle for Franken but also wrote in “Lizard People”? Has Franken proved he is synonymous with lizardry?
Overall, I’m heartened to see that the published examples of screwed-up Minn. ballots seem relatively evenly divided between stupid Democrats and dumbass Republicans (past events in Florida had me wondering if Dems held a decisive advantage in brain-deadness at the polls).
The ballot was officially rejected as an overvote.
How are the Lizard People ever going to gain political traction in this country if their constituency keeps spoiling their ballots?
Thinking caps, (Lizard) People!