Well, maybe not. I am impressed with the transparency I’ve seen so far, and it seems as if all the rules have been carefully maintained. Maybe because nobody knew how it would turn out if the rules were carefully followed? All things being equal, if it were Coleman who were ahead by a razor-thin margin, I wouldn’t be shocked and sickened. Sickened, maybe, but not shocked.
It will probably come down to who decides, local Pubbies or national. The national Pubbies will likely want to fight down to the last bullet point, local Pubbies have to live here, be more inclined to accept it and move on. Minnesotans are less defined by what they want than what they don’t want. And what they emphatically don’t want is to be Florida.
Now, Norm! is a “national” creature, the RNC picked him, propped him up and funded him, so he may be inclined to dance to their tune. But if he has any sense at all in that bucket of Spam between his ears, he’ll gracefully concede and hope ObamaCo screws the pooch.
Can someone please explain to me why they think it will be decided by the Senate? I just don’t see how that scenario plays out. Right now Franken has a thin lead. The Minnesota Supreme court has decided that there is no basis for Coleman’s claim of double counted ballots. Absentee ballots are still outstanding but the consensus there is that those favor Franken. Coleman can contest the election but the burden of proof on him is high and his chances of winning that process are (generously) slim to none.
The only issue for the Senate is what to do while the process of contesting the result plays out. Odds are they will seat Franken once certified contingently. But who is the Senator is not up to them in any way. Or am I missing something?
But there was more to it than the Senate unilaterally declaring a seat vacant and imposing a new election as a solution. Recount one had Durkin in the lead by 10. Another recount was done and gave Wyman a 2 vote lead. Durkin tried to trump that narrow second recount win by appealling to the Senate but even with a majority in his party it deadlocked. They even then didn’t decide the election; they decided to have another vote and the voters ended up putting Durkin in by a 27,000 vote margin.
Is this a comparable situation? Will Coleman be able to appeal to the Senate, not a majority of his party, and get them to trump the recount or deadlock the process? Or are you imagining that somehow Coleman prevails in contesting the election and Franken appeals to the Senate?
I’m just saying that the Senate could decide to take a hand, and that this is the type of situation in which the Senate taking a hand happens. Whether they do or not - who knows? - but it’s certainly not out of the realm of the possible.
Ah. Well “not out of the realm of the possible” is one thing. Concurring that it will be “settled on the Senate floor” is another.
What power the Senate has in this regard does seem to be a matter of some debate (sorry, your link to that pdf on contested elections did not load for me) that has been discussed along the way relevant to Stevens initial apparent win and to Blagojevich’s current circumstance. I defer to other minds as to whether or not it could happen. I just cannot see why anyone would expect that it will.
The Senate will want to stay out of this case. They will just wait for the state to declare a winner. They won’t even declare a vacancy if no one is certified on time.
That’s what I’m thinking. Someone - probably Franken, at this rate - will end up with a razor-thin lead, all recounts and challenges will wind down, and that person will be seated even if the other party is wailing and gnashing its teeth. I suspect the Senate will be quite content to let the contest be entirely resolved in Minnesota. The Republic will still stand if Senator X doesn’t take his seat until mid-January or so.
P.S. I can’t get that to load now either, nor can I find a cached page on Google. It was from journals.cambridge.org, and was titled “Partisanship and Contested Senate Elections” or something like that.
The Powell case relied on qualification, not on election. No one claimed that Powell had not been elected. The case decided that if an elected member was constitutionally qualified to be elected, that he could not be refused a seat for other (corruption, in this case) reasons. He could, of course, have been expelled after taking his seat.
The Powell case only applies to the constitutional requirements of age, length of citizenship, and being an inhabitant of the electing state. It decides that if those requirements are met, no other qualifications exist.
It is not relevant to a case of election or returns.
Yeah, the SC held that the “qualifications” part only refers to the potential member’s Constitutional qualifications (age and state residence). The Senate still has final say over the elections and returns part, which is the part that would affect Coleman and Franken, but not Stevens or whoever Blagojevich might appoint. Basically, the two issues have separate justifications for invoking the Senate’s judgment, and it’s a far better justification in the Minnesota case than the Alaska or Illinois case.
Well I am duly hereby educated. This article further confirms it. The debates I read of were not pertinent to this circumstance. It seems amazing to me, but there is no limit on a majority House or Senate’s power to decide the results of an election other than the reaction of the people. Am I reading it right? In theory a majority power could overturn any Congressional election result if it is “contested”?
But in any case I still fail to see why anyone would think that it will be decided by the Senate.
Because that’s the final step in the process. Once the courts have ruled that there’s a winner, the Senate must confirm that call by seating that person (or refusing to seat him). I agree it’s a done deal, but it still needs to happen, especially since there will be some rumblings that it may (or that it could) refuse to seat the winner,
In theory, the Electoral College might have said “Fuck it, Johnnie Mac is our man”. One might well expect a significant reaction. Torches, pitchforks, that sort of thing…
Well by that logic it is always decided in the Senate. And I don’t think that that was what was meant.
And many have a problem with the concept of the electoral college for exactly that reason - the worry that faithless electors could legally subvert the will of the people. And legally a party in majority could impose election results to their liking as much as they want? Fear of the pitchforks doesn’t seem to me to be the ideal check on that power, y’know?
Obviously, in this one single unusual case, there will be some calls and expectations from the side that is not seated to ask the Senate to reject the candidate whose name is put before the Senate to be accepted in a pro forma manner. But since this outcome is NOT pro forma here, since some of these people will arguing that the winning and losing candidates have not been identified legitimately, the case won’t ACTUALLY end until the Senate performs its pro forma confirmation.
Believing that this will be “settled” in the Senate seems to me to imply that someone believes that there is some significant chance that the Senate will decide to act in an other than pro forma manner - that they will do something other than rubber stamp the result.
What are the scenarios in which the Senate will have anything like a real debate over whether or not to accept the results of the process? Are any of them at all likely or are indeed all so improbable as to be insignificant possibilities?
