Perhaps in future, we will keep all election results sealed in a black box. Nobody will know the quantum state of the actual election, so Norm will have officially been elected. Makes sense.
Or maybe he won’t have been. Y’know, I could go either way on this thing.
How exactly would Coleman get his ass handed to him in a new election? Afterall, the first election was pretty close. Just saying…
Presumabely because a lot of folks who were on the fence, but leaning towards Coleman can see through what he is doing (not actually trying to win, but trying to keep Franken from being seated through any means necessary) would be disgusted enough to change their vote.
Lord knows I would, in that situation.
Several reasons jump to mind.
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In a recent poll, already cited in this thread, a majority of Minnesotans indicated that they want Coleman stand down.
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Coleman has demonstrated himself to be a hypocrite. (Not only that, but his statement – that Franken should have conceded on election night – wasn’t even legally possible.)
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Coleman has never been particularly popular in this state. Notice that he won over Walter Mondale by a very narrow margin, when Mondale had only been a candidate for about two weeks – Mondale was brought in to run in place of the deceased Wellstone. Further, he previously lost the race for Governer to Jesse Ventura. What does that tell you about how he is perceived?
The list goes on but it’s beautiful outside and I gotta git.
Well, perhaps, given the wildfire of Republican popularity surging through the country, coupled with Minnesota’s long standing affection for pissy, snotty little losers, it could definitely happen.
Have you heard? The biggest tent is the FREEDOM tent!
Norm Coleman is saying “let there be a brand-new election” because it is a no-lose statement for him to make. One, it’ll never happen; Minnesota law does not provide for a brand-new election. But two, and more significantly, nobody on the Democrat side of the aisle — least of all Franken — is going to come out against an election. Coleman could spin that all kinds of ways: trying to silence the voice of the people, anti-democratic, power-hungry, anti-American, etc.
“Oh, Lawdy, B’rer Norm! Please, oh, please, don’t you throw me into that briar patch, have mercy and don’t you be throwin’ poor ol’ Al into that terrible, terrible briar patch…”
In addition to the already mentioned slide in support and popularity for Coleman during this process (and he was never wildly popular to begin with), it also needs to be pointed out that the first election was a 3-way race. The Independent candidate, Dean Barkey, got 17% of the vote, the majority of those votes would now go to Franken.
Why wouldn’t Dean Barkley get to be in the new election?
Because it would presumably be a runoff.
There’s no legal mechanism for any revote in Minnesota, so you can make up anything you want.
If Dean Barkley was in the new election, a lot of people who voted for him would switch (like Ross Perot voters in 1996, or Ralph Nader voters in 2004).
If he wasn’t, they would have to switch or not vote.
Either scenario favors Franken.
Of Smoot-Hawley fame?
That’s the guy! For some reason I have a repro campaign button supporting it.
Right…Smoot was a Mormon Apostle, and his opponents turned his seating into a referendum on Mormonism.
If I remember correctly, for a while that was how our ballots specifically said to change your vote if you made a mistake. Now the convention is to draw a line through the candidate’s entire name and correct your vote.
VERY nicely done!
Perhaps that’s the way it’s done in your state (and that invites ambiguity and confusion), but in Wisconsin, the correct and only way to fix a mistake is to ask for another ballot. IIRC, those instructions are printed right on the ballot itself, at least the paper (but machine readable) ones we use locally.
The instructions you suggest are not machine readable compatible, as simple optical scanners don’t have that much sophistication to distinguish lines from circles from blots from signatures from…
In Ohio you’re supposed to ask for another ballot, which you can do up to three times. (I guess the philosopher-kings of the Ohio General Assembly decided that if it took you four tries to cast an understandable ballot, you were too much of a ninny to vote anyway).
Minnesota has no limit, AFAIK. There was a story in the newspaper about an immigrant who had just become a citizen and was voting for the first time – she was so excited at voting that she marked the wrong candidate on her ballot – it took her 5 tries before she got it right (and I think that time was because she had her teenager actually mark the ballot for her).