I guess it's not a hoax

Well, here we are one day later and it seems that everyone is still under the impression that after a challenge phase that lasted a couple of decades, Al Franken actually gets to take the senate seat he won. Apparently Norm Coleman just gave up after the Minnesota State Supreme Court ruled against him 5-0. Did no one tell him about the US Supreme Court, the plaintive pleas to God, the sacrifices on the black altar that he could use to drag this out for another thousand years? Al Franken is a Senator and there have been no take backsies, cries of "do over", and barring a certification ceremony where the wind blows the certificate away while a weeping Governor Pawlenty cries out "It's gonna take weeks to get another one of those!" Al will actually be allowed in the US Senate without having to have paid for the tour.

"I don't know if it has really sunk in," said Franken, appearing at his home in Minneapolis shortly after receiving a congratulatory call from Coleman, a Republican. "He said it was a very hard-fought campaign. I said, 'Norm, it couldn't have been closer.'

"It was a nice way to end this."

Franken's arrival in the Senate could give Democrats a 60th vote on many issues, a filibuster-proof majority that could help advance President Obama's agenda.

Uh-oh, a filibuster proof majority. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats are going to have to work double time to fuck that up. Actually there shouldn't be that much work. They're always be a Ben Nelson or Evan Bayh out there making sure they get their names in the press for "bucking their own party" and McCain-esque Maverickitude by hamstringing some type of Democratic plan that is broadly supported by the American public. It's how they do.

Finally Minnesota gets its second senator. No longer will Amy Klobuchar be down a man for the Senate tag team wrestling and 2-on-2 b-ball tournaments. More importantly the Minnesota Congressional Delegation will finally have enough members to stage that intervention with Michelle Bachmann to get her to stop the drinking, paint huffing, gasoline drinking, or whatever it is she does that makes her act and think the way she does. Congrats Al, just remember to keep bringin' the funny.

The obvious happens again

Judges rule Franken winner; Coleman to appeal

Three judges soundly rejected Norm Coleman's attempt to reverse Al Franken's lead in the U.S. Senate election late Monday, sweeping away the Republican's claims in a blunt ruling Coleman promised to appeal.

After a trial spanning nearly three months, the judicial panel dismissed Coleman's central argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

"The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately," the panel said in its unanimous decision.

Not only does a three judge panel recognize Franken as the winner, not only does a three judge panel declare that Franken should be certified, not only does a three judge panel openly laugh at the merits of Coleman's case, not only does the three judge panel mock the "evidence" Coleman offers up, but then this same three judge panel goes ahead and uses the decision to start knocking out pillars from any supposed appeal Coleman would make to the Minnesota and US Supreme Courts. The result? Minnesota gets it's time wasted for another month or so as Coleman valiantly charges forward in his fruitless appeals and search for justice any way to keep Democrats from getting a 59th Senator.

How bad is it for Norm? Even Joe Scarborough is trying to talk sense into him. What's that old saying? "When you've lost Joe Scarborough, you probably lost most of rational America five months ago. Now you're just starting to piss off crazies."

For Senator Franken, he just gets to live out another day in what has become his own sequel to Groundhog Day. He keeps reliving a day where august legal bodies tell him he's the senator, but he never actually gets to that day where he is a senator. It's OK Al, Norm can only appeal his loss to two more places. Surely that can't take 5+ years.

This changes nothing

You hear that sound earlier emanating from Minnesota? It was God laughing. No, not over Michelle Bachmann thinking that public service and socialist re-education camps are exactly the same thing, but over the latest development in Minnesota's endless Senate race.

Democrat Al Franken's lead in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race widened Tuesday to 312 votes after previously rejected absentee ballots were added to the counting.

Franken did better than Republican Norm Coleman by a nearly 2-to-1 margin as the ballots were opened and counted as part of a lawsuit brought by Coleman over the statewide recount. A three-judge panel ruled earlier that 351 ballots had been improperly rejected during the election and should be restored.

Franken led by 225 votes going into Tuesday's count of those ballots.

I'm sure this is all a wonderful precursor to several more lawsuits that will change nothing. That's the beauty of our judicial system: you can gum up the works with lawsuits no matter how meritless they are. Someone from the Minnesota Supreme Court want to step in? No? One Senator is all right with you? Fine.

Quote of the day

John Cornyn on why Minnesota will never have a second senator:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.

Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.

Sorry Minnesota, doesn't matter how many times Al Franken wins this thing or how many courts rule on his side, you don't get another Senator. Why? Because John Cornyn will get all pissy if Norm Coleman isn't able to file a million fruitless lawsuits. I'd say I sympathize, but you inflicted Michelle Bachmann and her tenure as America's dumbest elected representative ever, so I guess God is punishing you.

Sorry Al, looks like you'll be the only guy ever running for re-election that never got to take his seat.

DO OVER!!!!!

The recount in Minnesota goes ever on. If I recall it has lasted longer than the Civil War and the Hundred Years War put together. Guess what? It's still going to go on forever, because God has removed Minnesota from His sight. You see Norm Coleman has recognized that there is one critical flaw in this whole recount process: he lost and by any other count he will still lose. So to remedy this situation he has suggested the adult thing to do is a do-over, or he's gonna start doing some serious breath holding and foot stomping.

For more than a month, Norm Coleman stressed flaws in Minnesota's election system.

And on Monday, Coleman lawyer Jim Langdon wrote the three-judge panel to suggest the problems are so serious they may not be able to declare a winner.

"Some courts have held that when the number of illegal votes exceeds the margin between the candidates -- and it cannot be determined for which candidate those illegal votes were cast -- the most appropriate remedy is to set aside the election," Langdon wrote in a letter to the court.

His concern is touching. I even bet that if he was winning right now he'd admit the need for a do-over because he wouldn't be able to take the seat under such circumstances. He's just that honest.

However stupid old Minnesota law is standing in the way of Norm's solution. See apparently Franken was certified as the winner and there this whole burden of proof thing for Coleman to prove he got more votes. Also, Minnesota doesn't have any provision for do-over elections, even if the guy who lost really really wants one. Minnesota is still stuck on this whole 'most votes wins' malarkey. How backwards. Too bad for Norm the state founders and the lousy laws they wrote didn't realize his inalienable right to keep that seat or stall indefinitely to keep a Democrat out of it. Our loss really. And Minnesota's. Though if this works can we get it retroactively applied to the 2000 election?

Al Franken ascendant

So the Minnesota recount is finally over and done in a speed that makes Russia's withdrawal out of Georgia seem swift. Funnyman Al Franken will be certified as the winner of the election by a massive landslide of 225 votes, cuing up the imminent Scanner-style exploding of Bill O'Reilly's melon. This of course means that Franken will be able to take his place in the Senate around...oh...say never.

The state Canvassing Board was poised to certify the results of the recount in Minnesota's grueling Senate election in Al Franken's favor _ but that doesn't mean the race is definitely over.

The board was to meet Monday and was expected to declare which candidate received the most overall votes from nearly 3 million ballots cast. The latest numbers showed Franken, a Democrat, with a 225-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who led Franken on election night.

But after the announcement, there will be a seven-day waiting period before an election certificate is completed. If any lawsuits are filed during that waiting period, certification is conditional until the issue is settled in court.

That's right, Coleman still has to file countless numbers of lawsuits and drag this out to the bitter end. Of course the major lawsuit he wants to file is over the matter of a number of ballots that Coleman claims were double counted but no one else seems to agree with. The number of ballots he says were counted twice? 150. Meaning that if he's right, he still loses.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer has said that they should honor the results of Minnesota's election and seat Franken. Republican Senator John Cornyn finds that legally seating the certified winner of an election to be "troubling" and has vowed to filibuster any attempt to seat Franken until Norm Coleman is able to jack his lawyer's billable hours into the millions. Of note is the fact that Franken is Democratic Senator number 59. John Cornyn is a man of rules and laws, but also making sure he'll be able to stall shit with impunity. So as we see Minnesota will never legally have two Senators, they get one from now on.

Probably gonna be a Senator Smalley

Well it's almost over, with the counting of about 5,000 ballots left, Norm Coleman is now behind by 52 votes and the Star Tribune is predicting that Al Franken will be Minnesota's next Senator by a margin of 89 votes.(Eat it Nate Silver) So Al will be able to declare victory and start pimp strutting around St. Paul any day now, right? No, this thing will drag on into 2009, possibly 2014, while more challenges continue.

With Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's lead shrinking to just two votes, the state board examining disputed ballots in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race is close to wrapping up its decisions on challenges.

However a key court ruling has practically guaranteed that the recount will drag into the new year.
...
But the final outcome of the recount will also depend on some 5,000 withdrawn challenges that have not yet been allocated to the candidates. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said those wouldn't be allocated until next week at the earliest.

So the road goes ever on. Frankly at this point I think Norm will concede for a quick $75,000 funneled into his wife's account. The man doesn't have time to focus on a recount, he has to concentrate on a trial now.

Probable congrats to Senator Franken, Democrats now will control 59 seats.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.5

The recount is (almost) complete; Franken camp claims four-vote lead
As the Minnesota recount crawls mercifully to a close and primes for the circus sideshow that is the challenge process, Al Franken is claiming a 4 vote lead. No one else is though, soooo yeah. The key metric Franken is using is that he is counting all the challenged ballots by their ruling recounters made before the ballot was challenged and is assuming that those will be upheld by the canvassing board. Norm Coleman on the other hand, picked a random number out of a hat a claimed he lead by that number. Good news for Nate Silver, it doesn't look like Franken will win by 27 and I won't have to burn him as a witch. Matt Taibbi has a nice little article on the recount as well.

Analyst: Use Lasers on Pirates (and Everyone Else)
James Jay Carafano, PhD and homeland security analyst has a solution for the pirate problem: shoot the shit out of them with lasers. If shooting lasers at pirates (which was probably the childhood fantasy of 75% of boys) doesn't put the juice in your shorts he also wants to shoot lasers at Russia and Hezbollah. And sharks and bigfoots and sharkfoots. Shoot lasers at everything. Laser based defense. We need to listen to this man, we need to develop the necessary technology, and then we need to use it to shoot pirates.

Obama: "I Can't Grow Facial Hair"
Any hopes you had of P-E Obama growing some sort of Castro-esque beard, or perhaps going for a sartorial scholar look like Cornell West, or perhaps the hipster-indie follicles of Kyp Malone are going to see those hopes dashed on the rocks of despair. See, Obama says he can't grow a beard, not even a saucy mustache. Unless he changes this policy, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 will have been the last US President with a ballin' chin warmer. No bearded man has run since 1916, no mustacioed man since 1948.

Robbers in drag steal $100M in jewel heist
Four robbers, fully armed with weapons yet also disguised as women, jacked Harry Winston for €80 million (U.S. $101 million) in under 15 minutes. You had the fully automatic weapons and you still went with cross dressing for a 15 minute heist? Doesn't really sound like the cross dressing was too integral to the heist. There were no barons to be charmed, critical information need to be gleaned from a randy guard, and no sexytime shenanigans, it was a simple smash and grab. Someone just wanted to dress like a pretty lady.

Mexico Under Siege: The drug war at our doorstep.
Probably the biggest story you haven't heard about. If you want to read up on the massive Mexican drug war, the LA Times has a phenomenal series covering it. Essentially the President declared war on the cartels, the cartels declared war back, and it's like the heist scene from Heat 24/7. Bodies dumped at schools, gun battles, kidnapping, brutal killing and torture, gun fights in hospitals, pretty much open street warfare between rival gangs and battles with the cops and Feds. Nearly 7,000 drug-war related deaths since last year, and it's all taking place in Baja California and Chihuahua, sometimes spilling over the border. Both completely horrifying and worth your time.

Nate Silver brings the math

With Coleman's margin cut to 180 votes and most, if not all, of the Franken heavy areas of the state to come in, some would say that Al has a pretty good chance of locking this big damn race up. Those people are amateur guesswankers, flogging their limp notions in shame. Nate Silver, he of 538.com and a man who personally has more book deals than you've had hot meals, has decided to end all debate with math. Maths + English. Nate ran the numbers, created some math algorithms, and punched those numbers, plus/minus signs, fractions, an cosines into his computron and popped out a number: 27 votes.

franken_net = t * 8.922 - 3.622

Now, we can attempt to solve this equation at the statewide level. When we plug in a t of .499956 -- Franken was picked on just slightly very less than half of the ballots during the initial count -- we get a value for franken_net of .837. That is, Franken will gain a net of .837 votes for every 10,000 cast. With a total of 2,885,555 ballots having been recorded in the initial count, this works out to a projected gain of 242 votes for Franken statewide. Since Norm Coleman led by 215 votes in the initial count, this suggests that Franken will win by 27 votes once the recount process is complete (including specifically the adjudication of all challenged ballots).

Of course he says, it's all subject to blah blah blah and might not be accurate blah blah, but the man has charts and equations. It's over. Franken wins by 27. Nate Silver is the math Gandalf.

And if Franken does win by 27, I'm burning Nate Silver as a witch. Fair warning.

Your Minnestoa electorate

The recount continues. As of now Coleman's lead has been cut to 136 and Franken is jazzed because the votes came from big Coleman areas and sees a Senate seat in his future when the Frankenophile areas come in. Minnesota Public Radio has an interesting feature on the ballots that are being challenged and the challenge process, like the Lizard People vote above. Apparently the vote was deemed an overvote for both Franken and Lizard People and thusly thrown out. Franken has challenged it.

Lizard People.

Minnesota: Recountifying Day 1

The Minnesota recount is underway in....uh...Minnesota. In case you forgot, Norm Coleman won by around 215 some votes, declared himself Lord of Minnesota, and started his victory lap around St.Paul. Then they tapped him on the shoulder and told him about the recount and he's just been pissy ever since. As of last night the state has either counted 15.5 or 18 percent of the ballots, depending on the newspaper, and Franken has gained 43 votes or 41 votes depending on the newspaper and is only down now by around 174 or 172. Actually gaining votes is a misnomer, Franken lost 45 votes and Coleman lost 86 votes. Franken lost less. Franken has also challenged 123 Coleman ballots while Coleman has done the same to 143 Franken ballots. Nate Silver has the rundown on the challenge process and has vowed never to sleep until this election is truly over. What's this all mean? Probably nothing, because after the recount is done they'll slap dicks over challenged ballots. But if you want to keep up on the recount, the Star Tribune is keeping tabs as results come in.

MN/AK Update

Most uncounted ballots will be tallied Wednesday

Look for the needle to move on Alaska's landmark U.S. Senate race and other tight contests this week, with the Division of Elections planning to tally more than half of the uncounted ballots Wednesday.

For days, the count has been frozen. Sen. Ted Stevens leads Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by about 3,000 votes with roughly 30 percent of the ballots remaining to be counted, including:

• 61,000 absentee votes.

• More than 20,000 questioned ballots.

• 9,500 early votes.

If Begich wins 52% of these votes, Grifter Ted is shown the door.

Franken now just 206 votes behind

Six days after the election, unofficial results showed Republican Sen. Norm Coleman leading Democratic challenger Al Franken by 206 votes, a difference of about 1/100th of 1 percent that sets the stage for the automatic hand recount that will begin next week.

Monday was the deadline for counties to certify their results. Depending on the unknown number that may not have yet reported them to the state, that 206 figure could still change before the state Canvassing Board meets next week to certify the official total. Only then will the recount begin.

Coleman is wetting himself and the recount isn't even started, suing over 32 votes being allowed and losing. He doesn't seem confident the in the voters. Now's not too late to concede and put this painful/expensive recount behind you and stop hurting the state with correct tallying of votes, Al.

Yes, Norm, we are counting all the ballots

Now that Norm Coleman's bid to, for some strange reason, exclude ballots from heavily Democratic counties has fallen on its face, Minnesota can get on with it. I hope.

For a quick run down of how this is all going to work, consult this handy piece by the Star-Tribune. The recount gets going on November 19th. Get those Coleman voodoo dolls ready.

Minnesota update

We aren't even at the recount phase and Franken keeps gaining votes. Coleman's lead dropped to 236 votes last night when election officials discovered a mistake in Partridge Township's numbers.

Just as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was explaining to reporters the recount process in one of the narrowest elections in Minnesota history, an aide rushed in with news: Pine County's Partridge Township had revised its vote total upward -- another 100 votes for Democratic candidate Al Franken, putting him within .011 percentage points of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

The reason for the change? Exhausted county officials had accidentally entered 24 for Franken instead of 124 when the county's final votes were tallied at 5:25 Wednesday morning.

"That's why we have recounts," Ritchie said, surveying the e-mail sent in from the county auditor. "Human error. People make mistakes."

They haven't even got to the recounting and they're finding errors that amount to hundreds of votes, which is the margin. Coleman still thinks no recount should go on? Of course, he still wants the healing process to go forth. That's what guys who are cut and bleeding votes want: healing. .011%.

Expensive recounts trouble Norm Coleman

The Al Franken/Norm Coleman donnybrook in Minnesota is going to a recount. Coleman's lead has fallen to 438 and the closeness of the margin triggers an automatic recount. Franken's statement is clear "Our goal is to ensure that every vote is properly counted." Coleman? He's concerned the recount will cost too much and he wants Franken to call off the legally mandated recount so the "healing process" can begin. The cost of this recount.......$86,000.

For those of you counting at home, that's only $11,000 more than the $75,000 crooks funneled to Coleman's wife in exchange for favors from Normy. Norm's just looking out for Minnesotans, who hate spending relatively tiny sums of money to find out who their senator is. C'mon Al, the healing process doesn't involve knowing who really won, it involves agreeing that Coleman won and shutting up. So TB aficionados out there in internet land, if you have psychic powers, concentrate hard and blow up Norm Coleman's head Scanners-style. You owe us. He's a wretched shit and I hope this recount goes badly for him. Ooh, make him lose by one vote, God. I don't believe in You but it's what I ask of You.

If you people have have the means or time, heap abuse on Coleman and show some support for Franken. Also, the head exploding thing. Remember the head exploding with the psychic powers.

In less-depressing news...

Much as I dislike and distrust polls, SurveyUSA has Franken (DFL) and Coleman (R) virtually tied in the Minnesota Senate race at 40% to 41%, respectively.

Donate to Franken's campaign HERE. At least he'll bring The Funny.

Post by Matthew calling shenanigans on all polling data in 3... 2...