Hopes Dim for Settling Minnesota Senate Race by Friday

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Yahoo

Election officials attempted to make headway on Wednesday in determining the winner of the undecided Minnesota Senate race but it is unlikely the state will be able to certify a victor by Friday, as initially intended.

The effort to sort out the final vote in the incredibly narrow contest between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken has been bogged down in a host of disputes over the way ballots have been counted. The state's canvassing board, which oversees and certifies statewide election results, is now two days into a review of challenged ballots, in which the voter's intent was disputed by one or the other campaign.

These challenges -- more than 6,500 initially -- were issued by the two campaigns during the recount of Senate votes, which ended Dec. 5, although both sides have since withdrawn the majority of them.

The recount was triggered after a Nov. 4 vote tally showed Coleman ahead by 215 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast -- a margin of .007 percent. Minnesota law requires a hand recount in any election for federal or state office in which the margin is less than one-half of 1 percentage point.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20081218/pl_cq_politics/politics2998846

[Lasher]

1. The Senate should just go ahead and seat Franken

After all there is a strong precedent in the 2006 special election to fill Duke Cunningham's seat in the House of Representatives. Speaker Dennis Hastert rushed to swear in Republican Brian Bilbary 17 days before the election results had been certified. This effectively nullified subsequent Democratic legal challenges seeking a hand recount, and seeking to invalidate the election on due to irregularities.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0608/S00316.htm

[WhiteTara]

2. welll Bilbary is GOP afterall

and their leadership rushes to support their own. We eat ours. I'm betting Franken will twist in the wind.

[Lasher]

3. Well just as long as Lieberman's happy.

Looks like that's all that really matters in the Senate.