Today was another positive moment for the future Senator Franken from Minnesota. The loser in the race, incumbent Norm Coleman had been dragging out the race in the courts once the recount had finished and put Franken in the lead. Since then, Franken has continued to hold a slim but steady advantage of a couple hundred votes. Now that Coleman had his "wrongly rejected" ballots counted, his chances became even slimmer.
From The Star-Tribune:
Minutes after the ballots were opened for the first time, state elections director Gary Poser counted them, reading off the votes one by one to a hushed courtroom. When he was done, Franken's lead had grown from 225 to 312 votes.
Coleman's case during the trial has rested mostly on counting absentee ballots that he contends had been wrongly rejected. Barring an unexpected court ruling, he now lacks the ballots needed for a trial victory, and his lawyers repeated vows to appeal an adverse final verdict.
Franken's side hailed the day's developments. "The result confirms what we knew going in, which is that more Minnesotans voted for Al Franken than Norm Coleman," said lawyer Marc Elias. "That was the case when we recounted the ballots the first time, and it's now the case after the election contest."
Whether or not Coleman will call it quits after this is still up in the air. He could go completely haywire and protest the state Supreme Court, but I don't know if they accept cases solely because a candidate for office ended up losing.
Meanwhile, millions of Minnesotans are without a Senator representing them in Washington while a few Republicans surrounding Coleman continue to help drag this out for the sake of cheap political games. Franken has been a financial boon to the leaders of the GOP, as they hold fundraisers that paint him as their new official boogeyman of the Democratic party in that they claim he is stealing an election that he had won.
|