Or, as FOX News put it, “Republican Norm Coleman had been named the winner of a second term in the U.S. Senate, but Al Franken is still holding out.”
In fact, Franken trailed Coleman by only 571 votes out of 2.9 million in the Minnesota Senate race. Gee, why can’t he just accept the will of the voters and move on? Yes, that’s sarcasm. Coleman and Franken had 42 percent of the vote each, while Jesse Ventura style Independent Dean Barkley received 15 percent.
Barkley, who then-Gov. Ventura appointed to fill the seat of Sen. Paul Wellstone for about eight weeks after his death and until Coleman’s inauguration, was polling around 17 percent before the election, but his supporters were expected to jump ship for either Coleman or Franken. Instead, most of them sat tight.
Franken says there is evidence of hanky-panky in the initial returns.
There is reason to believe that the recount could change the vote tallies significantly.
Our office and the Obama campaign have received reports of irregularities at various precincts around the state. For instance, some polling places in Minneapolis ran out of registration materials. Our team has been working on those issues for several hours already, and they will continue to do so this morning as the recount process begins.
He also says the recount will start soon.
The process, dictated by our laws, will be orderly, fair, and will take place within a matter of days. We won’t know for a little while who won this race, but at the end of the day, we will know that the voice of the electorate was clearly heard.
Somebody needs to tell Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie that. He’s saying he’s going to take his sweet time, and the more anyone pushes him, the longer he will take.
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the recount won’t begin until mid-November at the earliest and will probably stretch into December. It will involve local election officials from around the state.
“No matter how fast people would like it, the emphasis is on accuracy,” Ritchie said.
Ritchie’s office ran a speedy recount in September of a close primary race for a Supreme Court seat. That took just three days, but Ritchie said the Senate race is entirely different.
“Having a ton of lawyers and other partisans injected into the process, that will change the dynamics of it,” Ritchie said.
For the record, Ritchie is a member of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, which has included Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, Eugene McCarthy, and Walter Mondale among its number.
