Senator Al Franken?

[phuloi]

Minnesota Calls Off Search for Missing Ballots

Monday, December 8, 2008 5:16 PM

By: David Patten Article Font Size



Minneapolis election officials are calling off the search for 133 ballots missing in the bitterly contested race between incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken.

City spokesman Matt Laible announced the city is suspending its search. He added that the matter will now be turned over to the State Canvassing Board.

For the past week, city officials have been scouring a warehouse in northeast Minneapolis for the missing ballots. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports the missing ballots come from Ward 3, Precinct 1 in the city’s Dinkytown neighborhood, a heavily Democratic area near the University of Minnesota.

If the missing ballots aren’t included in the recount, it would cost Franken a net loss of 46 votes.

The State Canvassing Board may decide to accept the original tally that was taken at the precinct the night of the election, despite the fact that the ballots have subsequently gone missing.

Coleman currently leads Franken by 192 votes out of approximately 3 million ballots that were cast, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and The Associated Press. That 192-vote lead assumes that Franken and Coleman are granted all of the votes originally recorded in Ward 3, Precinct 1 on the night of the election.

In another development, election officials across the state today began segregating any absentee ballots that may have been erroneously excluded from the Election Day tally.

Some 12,000 absentee ballots were disqualified because they were improperly completed. It is unknown how many of those ballots, if any, were disqualified improperly.

State election officials also must decide the fate of some 6,000 ballot challenges filed by both campaigns during the recently completed recount process.

Franken’s campaign said Monday it is withdrawing another 425 challenges, bringing its total of withdrawn challenges to approximately 1,000.

Coleman’s campaign has dropped about 650 challenges so far.

The Canvassing Board will meet later this month to begin ruling on the remaining ballot challenges, the excluded absentee ballots, and other election issues, before certifying a winner.




© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

[phuloi]

By; Ann Coulter




What is the point of having a hand recount of ballots in the Minnesota Senate race if the Democratic secretary of state is going to use the election night totals in precincts where it will benefit Democrat Al Franken?

Either the hand recount produces a better, more accurate count, or there was no point to the state spending roughly $100,000 to conduct the hand recount in the first place.

But that is exactly what the George Soros-supported secretary of state has agreed to do in the case of a Dinkytown precinct near the University of Minnesota. The hand recount of the liberal precinct produced 133 fewer ballots than the original count on election night and, more important, 46 fewer votes for Franken.


So he's proposing to defer to the election night total over the recount tally.

There are no "missing" ballots in Dinkytown. Ballots were run through the voting machines twice on election night. Last week, Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert explained they already knew for a fact that 129 ballots had been run through machines twice on election night, which pretty closely matched the 133 allegedly "missing" ballots.

As Reichert said, "There are human errors that are made on Election Day." According to an article in the Dec. 2, 2008, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Reichert was "confident that that's what happened" and that "we have all the ballot envelopes here."

But after relentless badgering by the Franken campaign, now Reichert isn't so sure anymore. So the new plan is for Minneapolis to submit both the election night total from Dinkytown -- which gives Franken an extra 46 votes -- and the meticulous hand recount total, which does not, and allow the canvassing board to decide which to use.

The 129 ballots that Reichert said were run through the machines twice on election night could end up being counted twice.

In all other precincts, the initial tallies from election night are treated as highly unreliable rough approximations of the actual vote, while the results from the hand recount are regarded as the absolute truth.

Only in the Dinkytown precinct, where the election night total gave Franken an additional 46 votes, does the state treat the hand recount as an error-prone joke compared to the highly accurate election night vote.

The Soros-supported Secretary of State Mark Ritchie explains that there is "precedent" for counting election night totals rather than the recount totals. If so, how about using the election night tally from some of the precincts that gave Coleman more votes on election night?

Highly implausible, post-election "corrections" in just three Democratic precincts -- Two Harbors, Mountain Iron and Partridge Township -- cost Coleman 446 votes. But I note that Ritchie doesn't propose deferring to the election night totals there.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed the 436-vote "correction" in Franken's favor to "exhausted county officials." Were they more exhausted in those three precincts than in Dinkytown?

Either the post-election tally is better than the election night tally or it isn't. Cherry-picking only those election night results Ritchie likes isn't an attempt to get an accurate vote-count; it's an attempt to get a Democrat in the U.S. Senate.

If Minnesota is going to accept the election night tally from Dinkytown, why not from any of these precincts where Coleman lost votes under far more suspicious circumstances? And why are guys named "Al" always caught trying to steal elections?

Wholly apart from the outrageous inconsistency of deciding that some election night tallies trump the hand recount and some don't, Franken's miraculous acquisition of more than 500 votes from heavily Democratic precincts in post-election "corrections" wasn't believable on its face -- and that's even accounting for the fact that Franken voters tend to be stupider than average and therefore more likely to fill out their ballots incorrectly.

Corrections in all other 2008 races combined led to only 482 changes in the entire state of Minnesota. The idea that typo "corrections" in one single contest from only three precincts, out of more than 4,000 precincts, could lead to 436 "corrections" benefiting Franken is manifestly absurd.

Ritchie's proposal to accept the election night count from one precinct is a stunning admission that even he doesn't believe a hand recount is any more accurate than the original election night tally.

To be sure, endlessly recounting ballots doesn't yield more accurate results, it just creates different results. There is no reason to think a tabulation is more accurate because it occurred later in time.

But then why have a recount at all? If the state of Minnesota is going to spend $100,000 and endless man-hours to conduct a meticulous hand recount on the grounds that it is more accurate, the state ought to at least pretend to believe in its own recount.

Election recounts are never intended to get more accurate results. They are simply opportunities for Democrats to manufacture new votes and steal elections.

And once again, Republicans are asleep at the wheel while another close election is being openly stolen by the man whose contributions to western civilization include the "Planet of The Enormous Hooters" sketch on "SNL."

[phuloi]

I don`t intend to let this issue rest! This is bullshit and needs to be addressed, lest we sit idly by and watch our beloved country go straight to Hell in a hand basket.
Democrat Al Franken has launched a door-to-door campaign in Minnesota to gather affidavits from voters and use them to defeat GOP incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
Franken presented on Thursday 62 affidavits from Minnesota citizens who stated that their votes for Franken were improperly rejected. In past elections, such affidavits have
Franken’s maneuver comes on the eve of a crucial meeting of the five-member Canvassing Board to decide the fate of absentee ballots. Local election officials throughout the state ruled that more than 12,000 absentee ballots were incorrectly filled out or otherwise were invalid.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune characterized Franken’s affidavits as “the latest attempt by the campaign to increase the pressure on the board to count absentee ballots that were improperly rejected.”
The Franken push includes a six-minute YouTube video portraying emotional appeals by voters who say their absentee ballots were improperly disqualified. One of the voters in the video is bedridden, another is recovering from heart surgery, and a third is a newly naturalized citizen who says he feels disenfranchised.
Coleman characterized the video as “shameless exploitation” intended to manipulate the election’s outcome, and a “new low” in Minnesota politics.
So far Coleman has maintained a consistent, razor-thin advantage. Both the Nov. 4 vote tally and the subsequent recount show that Coleman won the election. The affidavits presented by Franken would wipe out nearly a third of Coleman’s current 192-vote lead if accepted, however.
“What Franken’s doing is legal,” Wall Street Journal commentator and author John Fund tells Newsmax. “He’s not stealing the information. But it’s unethical. For example, you’ll notice he didn’t turn in any votes for Coleman. That shows he’s only interested in winning the election.”
Fund, author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, tells Newsmax that some county election officials in Minnesota are releasing the lists of local voters who requested absentee ballots. Franken supporters are contacting absentee voters to find out who they voted for and whether their absentee ballot was rejected. Those voters are being asked to sign an affidavit stating that they cast their ballot for Franken.
Fund says Franken’s maneuver is very similar to what occurred in the Washington state governor’s race in 2004. In that contest, both the Election Day result and the subsequent recount showed that Republican Dino Rossi narrowly won the election over Democrat Christine Gregoire.
When additional “found” ballots were added into a third vote count, however, Gregoire won. Eventually, she was certified the winner by 133 votes.
“The problem with absentee ballots is that they are public records,” Fund tells Newsmax. “They shouldn’t be, but each state government has a right to decide whether to make public the fact that someone applied for an absentee ballot. Some do and some don’t. But that’s the problem with absentee ballots, they take away some of the anonymity that goes with a regular vote.”
Coleman campaign spokesman Luke Friedrich e-mailed Newsmax the following response to the Franken video and affidavit: "We are standing behind the law on how recounts should be conducted and against efforts to change the rules when they don't suit your needs.
“We have consistently stated that every legally cast and counted ballot should be re-counted,” Friedrich adds. “The Franken campaign has made it abundantly clear that they could care less about the outcome of the recount and are instead focusing their energies on fighting the results of the election through the court system or by taking the issue to the floor of the United States Senate.”
If the election is close and Coleman is certified the winner, the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate could launch an investigation into the Minnesota election process, which could delay or even reverse the outcome.
A Franken victory would give Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, meaning Democrats would only need to find one Republican to cross the aisle in order to pass the new president’s ambitious legislative agenda.
The State Canvassing Board will convene Friday to decide whether absentee ballots deemed to have been improperly excluded on Election Day should be added back into the state’s vote totals.
Another outstanding issue: The approximately 6,000 challenges to individual ballots that have been filed. The Canvassing Board will meet Dec. 16 to rule on those ballots, and is expected to certify a winner later this month.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.By: David A. Patten

[darrels joy]

Coleman's Margin Grows in Minn. Race

[darrels joy]

http://www.startribune.com/video/?ls...Yyc:aUycaEacyU

In case you want to watch it live streaming video.
Coleman is only up by 5.

[darrels joy]

Franken Fraud Continues into the New Year

Franken Fraud Continues into the New Year and shows little sign off stopping without a court order. As the system works to ensure a Franken win (he lost on election night), there is little hope for the Senate Democrats to do the right thing.

“Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.”

The citizens of MN are being cheated. The Democrats have always been the party of sleaze, they just find it humorous when the right complains. These tactics must be stopped. There are now MORE BALLOTS than VOTERS:

“Under Minnesotalaw, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote.”

Just how is this not condemned by the left – the so called party of the people? Not to be outdone, the party wants to blur the law :” Meanwhile, Minnesota’s other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results.” Just so it looks like Coleman has really lost.

http://scoffery.com/?p=1790

[phuloi]

Minnesota Recount Goes Banana Republic

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 9:47 AM

By: Lowell Ponte



Is Al Gore right about the world’s getting warmer?


It might be so, because what used to be one of America's most frigid states, Minnesota, has become a banana republic.


In banana republics, elections are held. Citizens cast ballots. But the vote counts are rigged, and elections routinely are stolen in high-handed, brazen, and dictatorial ways.


The transformation of Minnesota into a banana republic was completed this week when its secretary of state certified that radical comic Al Franken won a recount of November's votes, narrowly defeating incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.


By early next week Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could attempt to seat his ideological comrade Franken as Minnesota's new senator, despite Coleman's legal challenge — a political fait accompli that many judges would be reluctant to reverse.


Franken's successful seating would bring the Democratic Senate majority to within an inch of having enough votes to choke off any future filibuster.


The filibuster is the only tool minority Republicans have left to prevent Democrats from wielding total power over both houses of Congress and the White House.


Franken's vote in the Senate could be the key that turns the federal government into an unrestrained one-party dictatorship, the kind of government found in countries that have gone bananas.


On election night, despite Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's substantial margin in Minnesota’s presidential voting, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman appeared to retain his seat by 725 votes.


Within hours, however, some strongly Democrat precincts in the state's northeast around Duluth began revising their reported totals and discovering mysterious new votes —almost all of which added to Franken's total.


In one notorious case, a partisan Democrat precinct chief reportedly discovered a pile of absentee ballots in the trunk of her own car. All of these, according to early reports, were votes for Franken. She later denied that the ballots had been beyond the control of safeguards designed to prevent ballot tampering, and she denied that all had been votes for Franken.


Franken-leaning counties rushed to submit 1,350 absentee ballots to be counted by the state Canvassing Board that on Election Day had been rejected as defective or improper.


The selection of the Canvassing Board and the recount were controlled by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an ultra-liberal Democrat with close ties to the controversial far-left activist group ACORN.


It is no accident that such an extremist came to control this recount in the Land of the Loon, as my Newsmax colleague David A. Patten reported Dec. 22.


Following Vice President Al Gore's narrow defeat in the 2000 presidential race, wrote Patten, wealthy radical leftists created the Secretary of State Project (SoS), “whose express purpose is to seed state election bureaucracies nationwide with partisan activists — Ritchie among them — who are strategically positioned to influence the outcome of close recounts like the one now under way in Minnesota.”


One of the biggest funders of the left's Secretary of State Project is Hungary-born eccentric billionaire and global currency manipulator George Soros, a radical obsessed with defeating Republicans because he fears America being too strong in the world.


In 2006 Ritchie was narrowly elected secretary of state, an office that most Gopher State voters deemed of little importance. He won with strong propaganda support from ACORN and financial support from Soros and organizations Soros helps bankroll, such as MoveOn.org. Ritchie was quick to thank the Secretary of State Project and its donors for his victory.


Ritchie is now repaying his left-wing masters a thousand fold, using his position to help give his fellow Democrats monolithic control of the U.S. government.


This is what conservative radio talk host Hugh Hewitt warned about in his 2004 book “If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat.”


How can a vote recount be rigged? The recount Ritchie ran in Minnesota will be studied in future political war colleges as a textbook example of the many ways this can be done.


In dozens of Minnesota precincts that boosted Franken's totals, the total vote was higher than the number of people who signed in as voters or absentee ballots. The apparent reason, as even State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, a Canvassing Board member, acknowledged, is that “very likely there was a double counting” of spoiled original and legally required duplicate ballots.


But instead of challenging this, the liberal Canvassing Board simply accepted the vote totals — both defective originals and duplicate doppelganger votes — without questioning local officials.


Coleman called for postponing the recount until uniform standards for what did and did not count were adopted, but Ritchie slapped his request aside. Soon thereafter, Ritchie went bananas pushing double standards for vote recounting that almost always favored Franken and took votes away from Coleman.


If a ballot was marked with an X across the fill-in box beside Coleman's name, this by Ritchie's determination meant that the voter was crossing out his vote for Coleman. But when a ballot's X was in the box next to Franken's name, Ritchie determined that this meant the voter wanted to vote emphatically for Franken.


By such machinations the Ritchie recount turned a 750-vote margin for incumbent Republican Coleman into a 225-vote margin of victory for Al Franken, former failed talk host for Air America Radio and minor star on NBC's comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”


The text he wrote to introduce his skit on “Saturday Night” on Oct. 21, 1978, read: “Franken and Davis are International Communist revolutionaries, calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Gov’t — they act out the campaign of two corrupt nominees for congress.”


A 1978 SNL skit introduction authored by Franken read: “’The Franken & Davis Show’ is brought to you by the International Communist Party: Sooner or later, you’ll be a Communist. And now . . . here’s Al & Tom.”


Communism murdered 100 million people and, like its socialist near-twin Nazism, is nothing to make friendly jokes about. But Franken at least honestly identified his political ideology three decades ago.

[darrels joy]

$5.15 billion directed squarely at ACORN. They elected the Washington State Governor and are doing the same thing with/for Frankin.

http://organizedexploitation.blogspo...ther-even.html

Who said "follow the money"?

Joy

[coachman]

Mr. air amercia is as stated a dolt but he will end up stealing the seat, I have always said if we let them get away with this kind of trash then we deserve the screwing we will get.

[phuloi]

Despite the fact a judicial and legal process is under way in Minnesota to determine who actually won the U.S. Senate seat, the Democrats are brazenly trying to bully and disrupt their way in a shocking attempt to seat Al Franken in the senate.

Just this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid arrogantly asserted he will seat liberal hate comedian Al Franken in the US Senate no matter what.

Reid stated: "We're going to try to seat Al Franken. There's not a question in anyone's mind, an assertion by anyone, that there's been any fraud or wrongdoing in this election."

How about starting with Minnesota law which clearly indicates Al Franken is not the U.S. Senator?

In fact, the election contest is still under way. Recently, the election process moved before a three judge panel to determine if Al Franken actually leads – after almost two months of Democratic funny business during the recount.

Remember, on election night Republican Senator Norm Coleman actually led Al Franken by 725 votes.

Then, Franken raced to his liberal friends in Hollywood and New York, getting millions from the likes of billionaire George Soros. Franken and his gang used this money to wage a fierce legal fight to steal the election from Senator Norm Coleman.

Media Hiding Truth About Franken Election Theft

It’s a disgrace what has been done. It is an outrage the media have simply not reported this story.

Let’s review some key facts Harry Reid, Al Franken and the liberal media don’t want you to know:

Every major Minnesota newspaper has agreed that the election is not over until the Election Contest is over. The state’s largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ,stated: “Coleman is justified in going to court. . . . Both Franken and Coleman should want court-ordered answers to questions that the Canvassing Board could not answer."
In its initial review of a few issues in front of the Canvassing Board, The Minnesota Supreme Court specifically deferred several significant issues during the recount to the Election Contest judicial panel including the issue of double counted ballots.
Even Franken in December was arguing that some issues such as double counting and wrongly rejected absent were issues for the courts during an Election Contest.
The manual of the Soros-ACORN backed Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office on how to conduct a recount plainly states a Minnesota recount cannot address all issues. “This is an administrative recount held pursuant to M.S. 204C.35 and M.R. 8235. It is not to determine who was eligible to vote. It is not to determine if campaign laws were violated. It is not to determine if absentee ballots were properly accepted. It is not – except for the recounting the ballots – to determine if judges did things right. It is simply to physically recount the ballots for this race!”
I want you to know that we at the Republican National Lawyers Association are not stopping in our fight for a fair vote in Minnesota.

Al Franken and his liberal allies in Congress and the media are powerful. But we have the law and truth on our side