I was hoping that common sense would prevail in this race, but Al Franken is involved so there's no chance of that ever happening. He's running on the legacy of Paul Wellstone. This guy is nothing more than a creation of the Democracy Now! type crowd, a phony, fugazi.
What basis is there to think that democracy is being hijacked? The recount appears to be unfolding in a bipartisan, professional way. As the pics linked to higher up in this thread suggest, both campaigns are being pretty liberal about challenging "dubious" ballots, but everything I've read suggests that the frivolous challenges will be recognized as such and tossed out; is there any evidence whatsoever that anything nefarious is going on?
I find the found ballots and the mathematical tabulation errors that are seemingly only in favor of Franken as suspect.
http://www.mncampaignreport.com/diary/2165/coleman-camp-if-we-dont-like-a-ballot-were-challenging-it Maxiep, I find your findings completely non-suspect. And Real, words cannot express my disappointment of late.
Well, I wasn't responding to your post, but absolutely I know why you do. That part was this: Also maybe a little of this:and, some and a lot of Meanwhile... <embed src="http://blip.tv/play/geUe29YQhYE6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="270" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>
Nope, I'm perfectly reasonable about it. I think both parties diminish voting when they dispute obvious votes for the other candidate. If Al Franken won fair and square, then I'll feel sorry for the Senate, but I'm fine with it. It's the will of the people. When I suspect that judges and election officials are trying to tilt the election in favor of one candidate, then I become concerned.
BUt they aren't. They can challenge a ballot for Coleman where the circle is perfectly, neatly filled in. That doesn't mean they will win the challenge. Let's let democracy work and see who wins, instead of trying to short democracy by trying to bully the otherside into forfeiting like Coleman was trying to do earlier.
Nobody's really doing anything wrong here- as the guy at 538.com says, it's obviously in their interest to challenge as many ballots as possible. The problem is, once the judgments start coming in on those ballots, if they flip the election, people in this forum (and more importantly, elsewhere) will cry foul and "suspect" things. Which is too bad, because this has been a terrifically conducted recount.
Again, I'm not talking about the challenging of ballots. I'm talking about the tabulation errors and found ballots--all in favor of Franken. Democracy is wonderful, but you have to be vigilant in its defense. Letting political cronies affect these elections through wrongdoing without standing up to them is the opposite of democracy.
Why are ballots that didn't vote for either Frankin or Coleman being contested? What purpose would it serve?
Apparently Franken has experienced ballot judges on his team, while the Coleman campaign has no idea what they're supposed to do.
That simply can't be true. Franken is a comedian. Coleman is a republican. Obviously you have your information backwards.
why do you assume if the vast majority of new found ballots being in in favor of one guy would mean he's the one that is corrupt? Isn't there a decent possibility that the other side might have been doing a more vigilant job of effecting/suppressing the vote and this recount is flushing out those suppressed ballots? STOMP
The Coleman camp wants them to count as votes for Coleman- obviously, they know this is frivolous (or at least i hope they do), but it's probably for the whole apparent lead thing. Maxiep, what found ballots are you referring to? Is there anything you can link to? Or tabulation errors?
Franken is going to win this imo. Norm Coleman's campaign has gone through the roof in the number of challenged ballots, and the gap between Coleman/Franken is now bigger than when the recount started. A large challenge gap has developed. The Colemand strategy is to have this big lead going into the challenges, and then when Franken starts making up the deficit quickly during the challenges (because of Coleman's frivolous challenges) to say that Franken is trying to steal the election by putting votes such as those in the original post in the Franken column, even though that won't be what is happening in reality.
