Things Aren’t Looking Good For Franken In The Senate Recount
The margins are still slim, but at least one election official says Coleman lead is big enough that Franken won’t be overcoming it.
While a tiny margin separates the candidates in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, it is wide enough that Democrat Al Franken faces a daunting task in challenging votes to erase Sen. Norm Coleman’s lead.
The two sides have disputed thousands of the other’s votes, but many of those challenges are regarded by experts as frivolous.
To win his case before the state Canvassing Board, Franken must prevail on more than 6 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes even if Coleman fails to succeed on any of his challenges, a Star Tribune analysis shows.
If the outcome of past election disputes provides a clue, Franken will have a hard time reversing enough votes to win, said one veteran elections official who has been involved in the Senate recount.
“Based upon the kinds of challenges I’ve been looking at in the last two weeks, I think that’s just not going to happen,” said Joe Mansky, Ramsey County elections manager.
Franken will undoubtedly take the election to into the courts, probably over rejected absentee ballots. But the problem is that there is no indication that any absentee ballots were wrongly rejected, and Franken’s challenge will amount to wanting to change the rules to inflate his vote total. I don’t think it will work. Or, at least, it shouldn’t work.
Keeping Franken out of the Senate will be a silver lining in an ugly, ugly election season for Republicans. But it shouldn’t be seen as a victory.
That a clown like Franken could get so close to being elected is an indictment of just how thoroughly Republicans have lost the faith of the American people.
